My sis sent me an e-mail that was forwarded to her. I read and found it a little informative about the creation of a commonly used word, and a little funny.
E-mail said:
Manure
- Thread starter DarkScorpion
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SJ_the_Bartender
Perma-Newbie
SJ_the_Bartender
Perma-Newbie
Its a better story, but I didn't want someone to think it was serious.
You also have to keep in mind, SJ, that wikipedia will never be considered a good source of research as there is no guarantee that something you read on it is accurate. Simply because a majority of people believe something to be true, doesn't necessarially mean it is, in fact, true. It's a common logical fallacy. Now granted, a large portion of the information on Wikipedia is correct. However, I know from personal experience that it is not all right. I corrected one article that was widely accepted as being true. How do I know it was wrong? It was about a relative.
Tifferzzz
Resident Badass
*Laughs in a sinister manner....* lookie what I found:
http://www.etymonline.com/baloney.php
I can't count the number of correspondents who have assured me this is true. Why is this lie so appealing? Why do people love this false story so much that they cling to it like an idol and cast their sanity beneath its juggernaut wheels?
This bit of fiction has been traced back, in a different form, to a Usenet posting from 1999. That one merely made reference to the smell. This is all pretty harmless, as a set-up for the "golf" punchline. But because it has the look of authentic history, it has begun to circulate as a legitimate etymology.
It has in common with a number of the other most common false etymologies a tendency to derive words from acronyms (The ethnic slur wop is said to represent "without passport," and fuck is variously said to stand for "fornication under consent of king" or "for unlawful carnal knowledge").
This Internet fabrication is a deliberate and audacious lie meant to complicate that which is simple, mislead, and give secret pleasure to the anonymous author of the cleverness. It is the equivalent of a computer virus. It is, to borrow from Richard Dawkins, a false meme.
To someone with a bit of linguistics in his books, the story sets off more red flags than a May Day parade. The first and biggest is its reliance on acronyms. Sir Ernest Gowers, in his revisions to the second edition of "Fowler's Modern English Usage" (1965, p.116) traces the rise of the acronym to World War I (ANZAC, etc.), but it really didn't becom a common method of word formation in English until World War II. The word acronym itself wasn't coined until 1943. The lack of a need for such a word suggests the degree to which acronyms were not a part of daily life until then.
As Gowers illustrates with many examples, modern wars breed acronyms. The American Civil War, the first modern war, produced a vast corpus of correspondence and official papers. But I find scant use of acronyms in them. The North's black regiments occasionally are named as U.S.C.T. (for United States Colored Troops). But these usages did not transpire into the common language of soldiers or civilians. Other Civil War abbreviations used today, such as ANV for "Army of Northern Virginia," are popular among modern writers, but nowhere in the Official Records.
The insult son of a bitch is recorded from 1707; the abbreviated form SOB is on record only from 1918. POW for prisoner of war was first attested 1919, but it was not popularized until World War II. A.S.A.P. for as soon as possible is not recorded before 1955, and again it turns up first in military slang.
So acronyms in English are on the whole a 20th century phenomenon. The word OK (c.1839) is a very rare exception (if the most accepted theory of its origins is the right one), as is n.g. for "no good" (1838). And note how these words, even after more than 170 years, are still "felt" as abbreviations and require no elaborate Internet stories.
Before that, there were "acrostics." Those are words in which each letter in turn is taken as the first letter of another word or name, which taken together hold some significance. An example is the word cabal, which wits noted in 1673 matched the initial letters of the five intriguing ministers of Charles II (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale). This was a sort of word-play that had gone on for centuries in verse composition. But cabal was a real word: it had been in print for at least 60 years before someone happened to notice this temporary political connotation. The initials weren't the source of the word.
The word shit has a long and well-documented history, far older than any large-scale organized sea-trade in northern Europe. Anglo-Saxon leechdom books use scittan in reference to cattle having diarrhea. A Latin text from 1118 refers to "Lues animalium, quæ Anglice Scitta vocatur, Latine autem fluxus interaneorum dici potest."
There are many examples of the verb from the 14th century [e.g., from 1387: þey wolde ... make hem a pitte ... whan þey wolde schite ...; and whanne þey hadde i-schete þey wolde fille þe pitte agen."]. The noun is attested from the 16th century, both in reference to excrement and to contemptible people.
The acronym theory of the origin of shit can't explain the related words in other languages, such as German Scheiss, Dutch schijt, Old Norse skita, and Lithuanian sikti, which come from the same prehistoric root. As far as I know, there's no corresponding acronym to "ship high in transit" in the merchant marine history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Which brings up another point. It's impossible to prove a negative, and I'm not the world's leading expert on shipping, but I have done a great deal of historical research, including detailed examination of ship's manifests going back to the 17th century and studies of trade and tariffs and commerce, and I've never found anyone anywhere shipping manure. People shipped a lot of strange things over long distances (bricks, for instance). But if there's one thing that an all-seeing providence has liberally supplied to every inhabited corner of the globe, it's shit. Who ever transported it often enough that shit-shipping evolved a jargon? Guano -- bird droppings as a source of nitrates -- became an important article of trade in the mid-1800s, but this is much too late for shit, and anyway guano is guano, shit is shit.
[A correspondent notes another problem: "I am a sailor. Things go below deck to stay dry ... they don't generally get wet there."]
So, the acronym theory for the origin of "shit" breaks down because:
* the word itself is a good 1,000 years older than the common use of acronyms;
* the original form of the word (Anglo-Saxon sc-, which regularly evolved into M.E. sh-) does not correspond to the supposed acronym;
* the verb is the original form, the noun derives from it; the acronym supposes the noun came first;
* no one has produced a single instance of this supposed acronym from any old mercantile record or ship's manifest;
* in fact, no one has ever established that there was a custom of shipping manure;
* the word has cognates in many other languages, including ones outside Germanic, for which no acronym theory of origin makes sense;
It doesn't fit the facts, it requires a very elaborate supposition for which there is not the slightest evidence, and there is a much simpler, saner explanation for the word, the only drawback of which is that it doesn't make a very good Internet joke.
Say it with me: "shit is not an acronym." Repeat 100 times for every time you forwarded that e-mail. Now go forth and sin no more.
http://www.etymonline.com/baloney.php
I can't count the number of correspondents who have assured me this is true. Why is this lie so appealing? Why do people love this false story so much that they cling to it like an idol and cast their sanity beneath its juggernaut wheels?
This bit of fiction has been traced back, in a different form, to a Usenet posting from 1999. That one merely made reference to the smell. This is all pretty harmless, as a set-up for the "golf" punchline. But because it has the look of authentic history, it has begun to circulate as a legitimate etymology.
It has in common with a number of the other most common false etymologies a tendency to derive words from acronyms (The ethnic slur wop is said to represent "without passport," and fuck is variously said to stand for "fornication under consent of king" or "for unlawful carnal knowledge").
This Internet fabrication is a deliberate and audacious lie meant to complicate that which is simple, mislead, and give secret pleasure to the anonymous author of the cleverness. It is the equivalent of a computer virus. It is, to borrow from Richard Dawkins, a false meme.
To someone with a bit of linguistics in his books, the story sets off more red flags than a May Day parade. The first and biggest is its reliance on acronyms. Sir Ernest Gowers, in his revisions to the second edition of "Fowler's Modern English Usage" (1965, p.116) traces the rise of the acronym to World War I (ANZAC, etc.), but it really didn't becom a common method of word formation in English until World War II. The word acronym itself wasn't coined until 1943. The lack of a need for such a word suggests the degree to which acronyms were not a part of daily life until then.
As Gowers illustrates with many examples, modern wars breed acronyms. The American Civil War, the first modern war, produced a vast corpus of correspondence and official papers. But I find scant use of acronyms in them. The North's black regiments occasionally are named as U.S.C.T. (for United States Colored Troops). But these usages did not transpire into the common language of soldiers or civilians. Other Civil War abbreviations used today, such as ANV for "Army of Northern Virginia," are popular among modern writers, but nowhere in the Official Records.
The insult son of a bitch is recorded from 1707; the abbreviated form SOB is on record only from 1918. POW for prisoner of war was first attested 1919, but it was not popularized until World War II. A.S.A.P. for as soon as possible is not recorded before 1955, and again it turns up first in military slang.
So acronyms in English are on the whole a 20th century phenomenon. The word OK (c.1839) is a very rare exception (if the most accepted theory of its origins is the right one), as is n.g. for "no good" (1838). And note how these words, even after more than 170 years, are still "felt" as abbreviations and require no elaborate Internet stories.
Before that, there were "acrostics." Those are words in which each letter in turn is taken as the first letter of another word or name, which taken together hold some significance. An example is the word cabal, which wits noted in 1673 matched the initial letters of the five intriguing ministers of Charles II (Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale). This was a sort of word-play that had gone on for centuries in verse composition. But cabal was a real word: it had been in print for at least 60 years before someone happened to notice this temporary political connotation. The initials weren't the source of the word.
The word shit has a long and well-documented history, far older than any large-scale organized sea-trade in northern Europe. Anglo-Saxon leechdom books use scittan in reference to cattle having diarrhea. A Latin text from 1118 refers to "Lues animalium, quæ Anglice Scitta vocatur, Latine autem fluxus interaneorum dici potest."
There are many examples of the verb from the 14th century [e.g., from 1387: þey wolde ... make hem a pitte ... whan þey wolde schite ...; and whanne þey hadde i-schete þey wolde fille þe pitte agen."]. The noun is attested from the 16th century, both in reference to excrement and to contemptible people.
The acronym theory of the origin of shit can't explain the related words in other languages, such as German Scheiss, Dutch schijt, Old Norse skita, and Lithuanian sikti, which come from the same prehistoric root. As far as I know, there's no corresponding acronym to "ship high in transit" in the merchant marine history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
Which brings up another point. It's impossible to prove a negative, and I'm not the world's leading expert on shipping, but I have done a great deal of historical research, including detailed examination of ship's manifests going back to the 17th century and studies of trade and tariffs and commerce, and I've never found anyone anywhere shipping manure. People shipped a lot of strange things over long distances (bricks, for instance). But if there's one thing that an all-seeing providence has liberally supplied to every inhabited corner of the globe, it's shit. Who ever transported it often enough that shit-shipping evolved a jargon? Guano -- bird droppings as a source of nitrates -- became an important article of trade in the mid-1800s, but this is much too late for shit, and anyway guano is guano, shit is shit.
[A correspondent notes another problem: "I am a sailor. Things go below deck to stay dry ... they don't generally get wet there."]
So, the acronym theory for the origin of "shit" breaks down because:
* the word itself is a good 1,000 years older than the common use of acronyms;
* the original form of the word (Anglo-Saxon sc-, which regularly evolved into M.E. sh-) does not correspond to the supposed acronym;
* the verb is the original form, the noun derives from it; the acronym supposes the noun came first;
* no one has produced a single instance of this supposed acronym from any old mercantile record or ship's manifest;
* in fact, no one has ever established that there was a custom of shipping manure;
* the word has cognates in many other languages, including ones outside Germanic, for which no acronym theory of origin makes sense;
It doesn't fit the facts, it requires a very elaborate supposition for which there is not the slightest evidence, and there is a much simpler, saner explanation for the word, the only drawback of which is that it doesn't make a very good Internet joke.
Say it with me: "shit is not an acronym." Repeat 100 times for every time you forwarded that e-mail. Now go forth and sin no more.
illogical_reality
The l33t One
Yeah, I'm not reading that....I'll just read the end....
Rand of Blackrose
Incorrigable Rogue...
Well Tiff, you certainly sucked the fun out of that post didn't you...
Rand of Blackrose
Incorrigable Rogue...
Hmm, I fear I may have been a tad rude. I don't think I've ever introduced myself to you, despite the fact that I've been reading your posts since I first discovered the .org boards Donkey's years ago!
The name's Rick, used to RP with the ol' Section One crowd around the time of the Assassins war.
And he works for me He's my number 27 henchmen...........make that 26, number 18 was just taken in by the Russian Authorities.....Promotion for you Rick Congrats !
Anyhow very interesting and informative Tifferzzz
Anyhow very interesting and informative Tifferzzz
SJ_the_Bartender
Perma-Newbie
So, in the same line as this, does anyone know the meaning behind 'get stoned' when referring to smoking marijuana? Where did that expression come from?
Tifferzzz
Resident Badass
Well if it's like the explanation that I saw regarding 'three sheets to the wind' it would have to do with the fact that they used to stone people, and the way that a person lumbered around after being stoned for some crime is a lot like the way smokers act after Marijuana?