Do you know S.H.I.T

[Sniper]

Esential Knowledge About the Origin of S.H.I.T.

In keeping with my New Year's resolution, I try to learn something new everyday. I thought I'd share one of my new found bits of knowledge with you that I found especially interesting.

Manure: In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large shipments of manure were common.

It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by product is methane gas.
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 determined just what was happening.

After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term "Ship High In Transit" on them, which meant for the sailors 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 ", (Ship High In Transport) which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day.

You probably did not know the true history of this word.

Neither did I.

I had always thought it was a golf term

[Darryboy]

I want to believe but...

[Big Chim]

Did you know the colour of adrenaline is Brown??? Think about it.

[Sniper]

Damn, you are shitting me......... Besides, it aint my own work.....

[skelstar]

So it seems you dont know SHIT sniper

[Sniper]

Its a shit show if I knew anything

[Pixie]

Another load of bullSHIT,claiming the etymology of a four letter word to be derived from an acronym.
They must have loved acronyms in the past.
Is it just a coincidence that the german equivalent is scheissen?



Scholars trace the word back to Old Norse origin (skīta), and it is virtually certain that it was used in some form by preliterate Germanic tribes at the time of the Roman Empire. It was originally adopted into Old English as scitte, eventually morphing into Middle English schītte. The word may be further traced to Proto-Germanic *skit-, and ultimately to Proto-Indo-European *skheid-, "split, divide, separate." Conceptually, it refers to that part of the body (the excrement), which is "divided" from the rest of the body. It is related to the verb "to shed" (as in, "to shed one's skin"), "schism", and other words in common English usage. In Ireland the phrase "I'm shitting myself laughing" retains the older pronunciation "I'm skitting myself" but this may be due to more recent euphemisation.

"Shit" has cognates in many other Indo-European languages, including Greek, where the cognate root skor, skato- has been borrowed into English and forms the basis of scatology and a host of related technical terms. The most likely common word for "shit" in Proto-Indo-European would however probably be *kakka, (cf. Latin caca, Anglo-Saxon cac, German kacke, kacken ["poo, to poo"], Turkish kaka or bok, Irish cac ["dung"], Russian кака, какать ["poo, to poo"], and Greek κακός ["bad"]). This may indeed be the origin of the term "poppycock" (used as a softer form of "bullshit"), through Dutch.

The variant form shite is found in many regional and social dialects, especially in Scotland, Ireland and Northern England where it is generally used as an adjective, and is sometimes used in other parts of the world as a less-offensive (at least in intent) form of the word "shit". Shite can also be used by people in North America to sound funny, as it is not usually used. (In the American English context its offensive potential may be somewhat mitigated, as are arse, bloody, and some other British forms of profanity.) In Ireland, poor items are often described as 'a pile of shite.'

Spoken and written substitutes for the word shit in American English include sugar, sugarplums, sheesh!, shoot!, shizzle, shucks!, as in the constructions, Oh, sugar! Sheesh, that was a close one, Aw, shoot!, and Aw, shucks! Foreign language versions are also often used such as "Scheisse" from German or "merde" from French. These are colloquialisms that are rather complex in usage, with sugar accruing mostly to female speakers in the American South and many rural contexts, shoot being near-universal, shucks enjoying occasional vogue in many contexts, and sheesh being predominantly urban, as well as doing double duty by crossing over with the term, sheez, which is in a continuum with jeez, a euphemism for Jesus. All of these terms are considered polite, mildly comical, and archaic, although none is an archaism, and all remain in general use. Countless words beginning with the phoneme, sh-, have seen duty as quick and improvised substitutes for shit by polite Americans, on occasions in which thumbs have been banged by hammers and stepladders have slipped their purchases.

Several foreign loan words in English are carefully spelled so as to avoid the sequential grouping of the letters, s, h, i, and t. The word shih-tzu offered a mediating h and hyphen long before such care was common in Romanizing phonetic Chinese. Shi'ite sometimes carries an apostrophe to further insulate it from homonymy. (However, this is also an alternative colloquial pronunciation of "shit"!) Produce departments in U.S. supermarkets take special care to use a double letter "i" in the labelling of shiitake mushrooms. The German-Jewish surname Lipshitz has been subject to many reconfigurations and legal changes, although holdouts yet stand firm. (The surname Shitz, however, appears to be abandoned, as any individual who held it would find their first name unwillingly and irrevocably engaged in a grammatical but unflattering sentence.) It has also been the subject of numerous jokes, such as "Doctor Lipshitz" the parenting coach on Rugrats.