I '____' you

[PAUL C]

I have often wondered about the selection of words in the English language. Who decided that 'shit' should stand for what comes out of our assholes. what would have been the effect on the world, as we know it, if that person had chosen another word, like 'love.'

I 'shit' you doesn't have the same ring I agree but only because we associate it with something else now.

Something to ponder.

A serious point. 'Fanny' is ass in American English, 'Fanny' is vagina in English, English. (the original and still the best).

Somebody once wrote to me about how erotic they found it that I included a scene where my hero licked then fucked my heroine's fanny. We do it all the time in England I told him.

I often wonder if he thinks me perverted.

 

[Ray Dario]

Paul, perverted is another subjective term. For instance

to some perverted means fucking
to some perverted means fucking the dog
to some perverted means fucking the dog in the ass
to some perverted means fucking the dog in the ass while it fucks your wife

so it is all perpective

 

[Dixon Carter Lee]

The word "influenza" comes from the word "influence" when it was thought that the shifting Spheres of Influence, i.e. the stars and planets, goverened the diseases of the body.
The word "telescope" comes from the Latin "scope" which means "to see" and "tele" which means "at a distance".

Nobody "chooses" words for the English language, they were developed over centuries of thought, and finally generalized when the first English dictionaries were created, adopting the particular pronunciations, spellings and colloquiallisms of London. (If the first dictionaries adopted the language customs of say, Blackpool, instead, the English you speak today would be much, much different.)

So there's no point in wondering why someone didn't "pick" the word love over the word shit because that's not the way it happens.

 

[doctor_insanus]

So there's no point in wondering why someone didn't "pick" the word love over the word shit because that's not the way it happens.

Which makes me wonder: just where in the hell did "shit" come from in the first place?

 

[cymbidia]

Which makes me wonder: just where in the hell did "shit" come from in the first place?

According to my OED, which has 3.5 columns dedicated to shit, as befits a word of such ancient lineage, the first written form of this word appeared c. 1308 in Rel. Ant. II 176 (whatever that is) in this manner: "Hail be ze, skinners, with zure drenche kive,..Whan that hit thonnerith, ze mote ther in schite."

The word, then as now, meant to void excrement.

~g~
cym

 

[cymbidia]

Love, on the other hand, has almost 15 columns of info relating its origins. Those 15 columns don't include, of course, ALL love-spawned words such as love-child (first recorded English [family] language written usage in 1805 by Eugenia di Acton in Nuns of the Desert), love-knot (1386, Chaucer), love-letter (1240, Wohunge in Cott. Hom. 283), lovely (1000, Sax. Leechd. III), and loving (1000, AElfric Gram.).

Now, if only i understood the citations and references ...
cym

 

[PAUL C]

What do these icon's mean.

I digress.

I am aware of the rise to prominence of the Mercian dialect of English. Before the Conqueror dialects were very much regonalised and it took the 1066 invasion, and the invention of printing later after French ceased to be the language of Government in England to develop what may be recognised today as English. They remained regonalised until the 18C/19C as most of the population couldn't read before then.

Anyway, back to shit, a subject that weighs heavily upon most people's mind's at least once a day. As with many older English words I would suggest it's origins are found in the Germanic languages.

Probably something to do with the sound the parting with of this made. Especially when loose, which their diet in pre-historic times, would tend to make them.

Heard a man on the radio say that the only reason any of us are alive today is that our ancesters were greedy. Those who were greedy ate more in times of plenty and grew fat, those who didn't, for fashion reasons etc, died in time of shortages.

Don't look down on fat people. We are the human races survivors.