When someone is “shit”… That’s bad When someone “ain’t shit”… That’s also bad When someone is “the shit”… That’s good!
???
Please help
This won’t help, but it’s fun: youtu.be/igh9iO5BxBo?si=oyLAwhvrhsR4FHSZ
Could anyone explain the linguistics around the word "shit"?
Submitted 4 months ago by Maven@lemmy.zip to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Comments
Dipbeneaththelasers@lemmy.today 4 months ago
brbposting@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
BlameThePeacock@lemmy.ca 4 months ago
ISMO is awesome.
wesker@lemmy.sdf.org 4 months ago
He’s the shit.
EchoCranium@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
Saw the question and thought of exactly this video. Great skit.
shalafi@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Beat me to it. Perfect for this post.
NeptuneOrbit@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Bad words just become extreme. The modify the emotion. They often don’t mean anything literally. You have to look for other clues or just memorize the terms.
Deestan@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Words don’t have meaning in isolation. :) The examples you give just have meaning based on the combination of words.
A bit like letters. We don’t think “r” is contradictory because in “fart” it describes something foul and it “tart” it describes somerthing tasty.
Eccentric@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
Traditionally in most European languages, the cycle of what is considered most offensive shifts between bodily functions (shit, piss), genitalia and sexual acts (cunt, cock, fuck) and religious profanity (hell, bloody), particularly against the Christian God. Some scholars define us as moving into a new cycle, where the most offensive words are slurs based on race, sexuality, or gender. These scholars speculate that this results in more willingness to experiment with already existing swear words of the ‘traditional’ categories since they are considered less offensive in comparison.
Swear words are almost always used euphemistically and in set phrases. Some scholars go as far as to argue that swearing is only euphemistic and words used literally do not count as “swearing”. In fact, much of swear word usage can be classified as an intensifier, which is a word or short phrase that sort of heightens the already existing mood of the sentence but doesn’t explicitly change the meaning. Using shit as an example, “Shit, the bread’s gone stale again.” In this example, you can also see shit being used as a sort of mood marker, since it is reasonable to assume out of context that the bread going stale might be desirable to the speaker. In this case, the “shit” marks the stale bread is actually bad as well as intensifying the mood as compared to, say “oh darn, the bread’s gone stale again.”
This part is a bit of speculation on the origin of set phrases like “ain’t shit” or “the shit” and I haven’t actually read any scholarly literature on this topic specifically. You can see similarities between set phrases like “this is the shit” and “this is the stuff” and “that’s the spot”. It seems like this is a construction common in the English language to express that something is pleasurable. Whether this is what caused the “this is the shit” set phrase or whether the “this is the shit” set phrase caused the construction remains to be seen. “Ain’t shit” is definitely somewhat different because it probably comes from African American Vernacular English (AAVE). While I would argue that “the shit” could be AAVE in origin as well, I do think it has roots in non AAVE English, whereas “ain’t shit” is grammatically AAVE.
TL;DR: swear words like “shit” usually emphasize the mood of a sentence rather than add new meaning, which is why “shit” seems to change connotation across your examples. Think like the word “very”.
If you’re interested in reading more, I recommend The F Word by Jesse Sheidlower and Holy Sh*t by Melissa Mohr.
Toes@ani.social 4 months ago
Their tone or inflection as well as context and social ques are important qualities to distinguish the intent.
Additionally, there are many idioms that you’ll just need to know to properly get it. (You can think of idioms like kanji or memes if that helps.)
BigMikeInAustin@lemmy.world 4 months ago
I think they are pronounced shitiodms.
Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 4 months ago
Shieeet: amazed, wow
Nice shit: good stuff
No shit: obvious
Holy shit: surprise
It’s a swiss army knife of english word
Blaze@sopuli.xyz 4 months ago
ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub 4 months ago
I would add:
Shit head: a negative term for a person who likely is toxic or caustic for other negative reasons
Shitter: a person who may enjoy shit head humor. One who shit is not necessarily negative like shit head. Could be used to casually downplay a type of humor (lightly positive) or to dismiss a type of behavior (lightly negative)
Resol@lemmy.world 4 months ago
There’s also “enshittification”, which has an entire Wikipedia article solely about it. Everyone has heard about it at this point.
Emperor@feddit.uk 4 months ago
protist@mander.xyz 4 months ago
How about horseshit, apeshit, batshit, dogshit, and probably lots more. Each of these has a pretty specific use case
rigamarole@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Not to mention bullshit.
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 4 months ago
When it comes to the mess that history has made of English, Susie Dent should be sought for guidance.
Evil_incarnate@lemm.ee 4 months ago
And don’t forget the division. A piece of shit, is bad, like a car that won’t start, or a selfish person. A big piece of shit or a huge piece of shit is worse, but it’s never a whole shit, because then it would be The shit, and good.
Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 4 months ago
The difference between shit and shite
Kevin Bridges
xmunk@sh.itjust.works 4 months ago
That shits wicked.
nikaaa@lemmy.world 4 months ago
“shit” expresses excitement. And just like excitement, that can be good or bad.
lvxferre@mander.xyz 4 months ago
First you have an association of anything bad with excrements. This is cross-linguistically fairly common, and really old. To the point that I can’t help but quote Martial’s Epigrams, Liber III, Epigram 17 for 1st century Latin:
I’m copypasting the translation out of laziness, but… it is not accurate. “Merda” is not just filth, it’s literally “shit” - Martial is referring to the dish as shit, to convey that it was awful.
From that “shit = bad” meaning, you got semantic amelioration generating the “the shit = the best”. English slang does this fairly often; refer to “sick”, “dope”, “wicked” doing the same. I’m not sure but I think that the underlying process is:
That also explains why “it ain’t shit” is generally negative - it conveys “it isn’t noteworthy”.
Zeratul@lemmus.org 4 months ago
Fucking well done comment, sir. Thank you
Blizzard@lemmy.zip 4 months ago
That comment is the shit!
Blyfh@lemmy.world 4 months ago
Huh, I always thought “ain’t shit” comes from “this is so bad, it ain’t even shit”. Was probably just my personal take to explain it.