2 November 2021
[Update 14 December 2022: added 1844 interjectional use]
The passage from Bald’s Leechbook that uses the word shit
It is commonly believed that our so-called “four-letter words” are all Old English in origin, dating back to the earliest days of our language. In most cases, this is a false assumption. Most of our modern swear words are more recent than the early medieval era. Shit, however, is an exception where this common belief is actually correct. It traces back to the Old English scitte.
Here is a passage from Bald’s Leechbook, a mid tenth-century manuscript of a medical text:
Wiþ þon þe men mete untela melte & gecirre on yfele wætan & scittan, þam monnum ðeah þæt hie spiwen, gif him to uneaðe ne sie, gegremme mið wyrtðrence þæt he spiwe.
(In case a person’s food digests badly and turns to an evil liquid and shit. [It is good for] these people that they should spew; if it is difficult for them, induce with wort-drink so that they spew.)
In Old English use, or at least in the instances of the word that survive, scitte specifically means diarrhea.
The Old English verb *scitan (to shit) isn’t found in the extant Old English corpus, but it probably existed. The verb is first recorded in Middle English, in the c.1335 Hail Seint Michel Wiþ þe Lange Sper, a satirical poem of twenty stanzas. The poem is a parody of the Norse practice of minnis-drykkja, or toasting the saints. The first five stanzas toast saints, starting with archangel Michael (technically not a saint, but labeled and treated as such), the next five toast clerics, the next nine toast various tradespeople, and the last stanza addresses the audience, telling them to drink deeply. The word schite appears in a stanza about how tanners and their chemical solutions produce a noxious odor:
Hail be ȝe skinners wiþ ȝure drenche kine!
Who so smilliþ þerto, wo is him aliue,
Whan þat hit þonneriþ, ȝe mote þer in schite.
Daþeit ȝur curteisie, ȝe stinkeþ al þe strete,
Worþ hit wer, þat he were king
Þat ditid þis trie þing.(Hail to you skinners, with your pungent liquid!
Whoever so sniffs it, he is ever so wretched,
When in that place, you must shit in there.
Cursed be your courtesy, you stink up the street,
It would be worthy, that if he were king
That he ended this vexatious thing.)
Use of shit as an interjection doesn’t come until much later. The earliest recorded instance of the interjection is in a 16 May 1844 diary entry of one James Thomas Robinson:
Drunk! Drunk! Why in hell cant I be a Byron, or more! Why cant I immortalize my name before morning? I dont think much of this heavy drunk after all that is said about it. I dont think tis very pleasant, this allmighty dizzyness. I cant seem to write. Shit.
The punctuation makes it clear that the word is an interjection and not a characterization of his writing.
The next known use of shit as an interjection is in the record of a 5 July 1865 US Army court martial:
Charge II. Conduct prejudicial to good order and military discipline. Specification 1. In this that he, Private James Sullivan, Company I, 13th Regt. V.R.C. having been ordered by Srgt. Edward R. Finno [?] of said company to fall in the ranks for dress parade did in a contemptuous and disrespectful manner reply (to Srgt. E. R. Finno [?]) “O shit I cant,” or words to that effect.
[I am not certain of the sergeant’s name. The handwriting is not particularly good, and names are difficult to transcribe at the best of times.]
These particular instances may be the earliest we know of, but it is certain that people were saying “oh, shit” long before this date; it just wasn’t recorded in writing. As more handwritten manuscripts are digitized, undoubtedly more and probably earlier instances of the usage will be found.
Oh, and that story about shit originating as an acronym meaning ship high in transport. That’s too obviously a joke, not a serious attempt to explain where the word comes from.
Sources:
Cockayne, Oswald. Leechdoms, Wortcunning, and Starcraft of Early England, vol. 2 of 3. London: Longman, et al., 1865, 226–227. HathiTrust Digital Archive. London, British Library, Royal MS 12.D.xvii, fol. 84v.
Heuser, W. Die Kildare-Gedichte. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1904. 157. HathiTrust Digital Archive. https://www.hathitrust.org/ London, British Library, Harley MS 913, fol. 8r.
Martin, Susan. “‘Why Cant I Immortalize My Name Before Morning?’: The Diaries of James Thomas Robinson.” The Beehive (blog). Massachusetts Historical Society. 25 February 2019.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019. s.v. shit, n., shitten, v.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, September 2011, modified September 2021, shit, n. and adj., shit, v.; modified December 2020, s.v. shit, int.
Proceedings Court Martial United States Army (Judge Advocate General's Office), US National Archives: Rec. group 153, File MM-2412 3 Charge II.
Sheidlower, Jesse. “Interjectional ‘Shit’ in a Drunken 1844 Diary Entry.” Strong Language (blog), 13 December 2022.
Turville-Petre, Thorlac. Poems from BL MS Harley 913, “The Kildare Manuscript.” Early English Text Society OS 345. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2015, 9–10, 12.
Image credit: Portion of London, British Library, Royal MS 12.D.xvii, fol. 84v. Public domain image as a mechanical reproduction of a public domain work.