WT Forums

This is interesting:

Subject: FW: Important history lesson

In the 16th and 17th centuries, before commercial fertilizer was
invented, large shipments of manure were transported by ship. It was
shipped in dry bundles because in dry form it weighed a lot less than
when wet. But once water hit it at sea, it not only became heavier,
but the process of fermentation began, a by-product of which is methane
gas. It didn't take long for methane to build up below decks and the
first time someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOM! Several
ships were destroyed in this manner before somebody figured out what was
happening. Once they determined the role that manure played in the
explosions, everybody began stamping the bundles with the term "Ship
High In Transit," so that the sailors would know to stow it high enough
off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not
touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane. Thus
evolved the term "S.H.I.T," which has come down through the centuries
and is in use to this very day.

I always thought it was a golf term

Gave me a good laugh! <img src=icon_smile_big.gif border=0 align=middle><img src=icon_smile_approve.gif border=0 align=middle>

Ugly but well hung!
http://www.warthogpen.com

Claim: The word "shit" comes from an acronym for "Ship High in Transit."
Status: False.

Examples:
Sorry, guys!:

[Collected on the Internet, 2002]
History in the making!!!!

Fabulous bit of historical knowledge: Ever wonder where the word shit comes
from ... well here it is

Certain types of manure used to be transported (as everything was back then)
by ship ... well in dry form it weighs a lot less, but once water (at sea)
hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began
again, and one of the by products is methane gas . . . and as the stuff was
stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen,
methane began to build up below decks and the first time someone came below
at night with a lantern . . . BOOOOM! Several ships were destroyed in this
manner before it was discovered what was happening. After that the bundles
of manure where always stamped with the term S.H.I.T on them which meant to
the sailors to "Ship High In Transit". In other words high enough off the
lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this
volatile cargo and start the production of methane.

Bet you didn't know that one.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----

[Collected on the Internet, 1999]

In the 1800's, cow pie's were collected on the prairie and boxed and loaded
on steam ships to burn instead of wood. Wood was not only hard to find, but
heavy to move around and store.

When the boxes of cow pie's were in the sun for days on board the ships,
they would smell bad. So when the manure was boxed up, they stamped the
outside of the box, S.H.I.T. . . which means Ship High In Transit.

When people came aboard the ship and said,"Oh what is that smell!" They were
told it was shit.

That is where the saying came from . . . It smells like shit!




Origins: This
sorry piece of codswallop about exploding ships appears to have begun its
Internet life in February 2002. Its cousin, the "bad smelling steamship
fuel" tale (second example quoted above), began its online life as an April
1999 post to the USENET discussion list rec.humor. Akin to the faux
etymology of the word 'f**k,' a specious acronym has once again been claimed
as the origin of yet another term beloved of potty-mouths everywhere.

We could launch into a long, involved discussion of ancient shipping
practices, methane production and properties, and Internet leg-pulls, but
we'll spare you all that, as the fanciful stories listed can easily be
debunked as the product of someone's wild imaginings through linguistic
means.

The word shit entered modern English language derived from the Old English
nouns scite and the Middle Low German schite, both meaning "dung," and the
Old English noun scitte, meaning "diarrhea." Our most treasured cuss word
has been with us a long time, showing up in written works both as a noun and
as a verb as far back as the 14th century.

Scite can trace its roots back to the proto-Germanic root skit-, which
brought us the German scheissen, Dutch schijten, Swedish skita, and Danish
skide. Skit- comes from the Indo-European root skheid- for "split, divide,
separate," thus shit is distantly related to schism and schist. (If you're
wondering what a verb root for the act of separating one thing from another
would have to do with excrement, it was in the sense of the body's
eliminating its waste -- "separating" from it, so to speak. Sort of the
opposite of today's "getting one's shit together.")

Barbara "shit disturber" Mikkelson

Last updated: 13 August 2002


Without Geospacial Intelligence You're Nowhere

_________________
\"Those who hammer their guns into plows
will plow for those who do not.\"
- Thomas Jefferson

You know, the minute I posted that I just KNEW someone was going to go ahead and post one of those "false urban legend posts" and debunk it. When I first read the ship-story I also was kinda skeptical because I did remember learning about the German derivation at one time.
Then I thought, ehh, What the s*$t.

Thanks for ruining the fun and educating us at the same time 30mm.
<img src=icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>





Edited by - tritonal on May 22 2003 2:10 PM

Too bad it was debunked. I pictured the abreviation for Ship High In Transit to be the word some sailor with a lantern barely had time to say before the explosion. <img src=icon_smile.gif border=0 align=middle>

"The Prince of Pain wears a crown of stupidity. How ya feeling, your Majesty?"

_________________

<BLOCKQUOTE id=quote><font size=1 face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id=quote>quote:<hr height=1 noshade id=quote>
The word shit entered modern English language derived from the Old English
nouns scite and the Middle Low German schite, both meaning "dung," and the
Old English noun scitte, meaning "diarrhea." Our most treasured cuss word
has been with us a long time, showing up in written works both as a noun and
as a verb as far back as the 14th century.
<hr height=1 noshade id=quote></BLOCKQUOTE id=quote></font id=quote><font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" size=2 id=quote>
LOL, I learned that on South Park =P

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke

Sorry, I had to...


Fuck
Popular etymologies agree, unfortunately incorrectly, that this is an acronym meaning either Fornication Under Consent of the King or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, the latter usually accompanying a story about how medieval prisoners were forced to wear this word on their clothing.

Deriving the etymology of this word is difficult, as it has been under a taboo for most of its existence and citations are rare. The earliest known use, according to American Heritage and Lighter, predates 1500 and is from a poem written in a mix of Latin and English and entitled Flen flyys. The relevant line reads:

Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli.
Translated:

They [the monks] are not in heaven because they fuck the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].
Fuccant is a pseudo-Latin word and in the original it is written in cipher to further disguise it.

Some sources cite an alleged use from 1278 as a personal name, John le Fucker, but this citation is questionable. No one has properly identified the document this name supposedly appears in and even if it is real, the name is likely a variant of fuker, a maker of cloth, fulcher, a soldier, or another similar word.

The earliest usage cite in the OED2 dates from 1503 and is in the form fukkit. The earliest cite of the current spelling is from 1535.

The word was not in common (published) use prior to the 1960s. Shakespeare did not use it, although he did hint at it for comic effect. In Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) he gives us the pun "focative case." In Henry V (IV.iv), the character Pistol threatens to "firk" a French soldier, a word meaning to strike, but commonly used as an Elizabethan euphemism for fuck. In the same play (III.iv), Princess Katherine confuses the English words foot and gown for the French foutre and coun (fuck and cunt, respectively) with comic results. Other poets did use the word, although it was far from common. Robert Burns, for example, used it in an unpublished manuscript.

The taboo was so strong that for 170 years, from 1795 to 1965, fuck did not appear in a single dictionary of the English language. In 1948, the publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphemism "fug" instead, resulting in Dorothy Parker's comment upon meeting Mailer: "So you're the man who can't spell fuck."

The root is undoubtedly Germanic, as it has cognates in other Northern European languages: Middle Dutch fokken meaning to thrust, to copulate with; dialectical Norwegian fukka meaning to copulate; and dialectical Swedish focka meaning to strike, push, copulate, and fock meaning penis. Both French and Italian have similar words, foutre and fottere respectively. These derive from the Latin futuere.

While these cognates exist, they are probably not the source of fuck, rather all these words probably come from a common root. Most of the early known usages of the English word come from Scotland, leading some scholars to believe that the word comes from Scandinavian sources. Others disagree, believing that the number of northern citations reflects that the taboo was weaker in Scotland and the north, resulting in more surviving usages. The fact that there are citations, albeit fewer of them, from southern England dating from the same period seems to bear out this latter theory.

There is also an elaborate explanation that has been circulating on the internet for some years regarding English archers, the Battle of Agincourt, and the phrase Pluck Yew! This explanation is a modern jest--a play on words. However, there may be a bit of truth to it. The British (it is virtually unknown in America) gesture of displaying the index and middle fingers with the back of the hand outwards (a reverse peace sign)--meaning the same as displaying the middle finger alone--may derive from the French practice of cutting the fingers off captured English archers. Archers would taunt the French on the battlefield with this gesture, showing they were intact and still dangerous. The pluck yew part is fancifully absurd. This is not the origin of the middle finger gesture, which is truly ancient, being referred to in classical Greek and Roman texts.


"Retreat, hell! We just got here!"-Captain Lloyd Williams, 2nd Marine Division, Belleau Wood, France, WWI

Pete is not a big fan of profanity here guys.

Please keep that in mind.

"If they mean to have a war, let it begin here." Captain John Parker, Battle of Lexington.