Interesting Fact

sarg · Guru

Interesting Fact

capricorn and pisces · Senior Member

Is that story true, Sarg? I love hearing the stories behind the meanings of words or how they evolved to the way we use them today.

The first word I ever heard about in that way was the word "posh" I was told it was a shipping term for the rich from England who could afford to pay the extra for a cabin that was "Port Out, Starboard Home" ! Anyone know any other interesting words and their origins?

cheers Capricorn

Cloak · Guru

A Londoner I used to work with told me that Pom used to mean 'Prisoner Of His Majesty'. We lost the silent H some time ago.

Of course this has nothing to do with sh1t though.

03_troopy · Guru

sarg wrote:

Manure... An interesting fact
Manure: In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship and it was also before the invention of commercial fertilizers, so large shipments of manure were quite common.

It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, not only did it become heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by product is methane gas of course. As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles 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 instruction
' Stow 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 ', (Stow High In Transit) 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 fishing term.

Great story and has been around for a while on different boards. But in fact it's a load of crap biggrin

see etymology of "s h i t"

you can even press play to hear the pronunciation if you're not sure about it biggrin

johnq · Guru

Old English.

Apparently its discovery was rather early, but it would take a PhD and a guvvy grant to confirm that.

Interestingly, merde est féminin.

Now gentlemen, if you could be a mite sensitive in responding to that trivia.

johnq · Guru

Just thinking, could it be that the original s**t stirrer with that damn apple was a woman?

OK, I'm leaving...

dorian · Guru

www.wordorigins.org/index.php/site/comments/****/

"It is commonly believed that our so-called “four-letter words” are all Anglo-Saxon 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 much more recent than the Old English era. ****, however, does go back to an Old English root, *scítan. It has cognates in most of the other Germanic languages and shares a common Germanic root with modern equivalents like the modern German scheissen.

*Scitan, however, doesn’t appear in extant Old English texts and is only assumed to have existed in Old English. (The * mark is standard etymological notation for a reconstructed word, one that is believed to have existed. The verb to **** is not actually found in any manuscript until the Middle English period."

"In 2002, an alleged acronymic origin for **** appeared on the Internet. According to this tale, the word is from an acronym for Ship High In Transit, referring to barges carrying manure. This is a complete fabrication and absurd on its face. All it takes to disprove it is to look up the word in any decent dictionary. Remember, anytime someone posits an acronymic word origin, chances are that it is utterly false."

03_troopy · Guru

Similar to the urban myth that the word "c r a p" originated because a master plumber by the name of Thomas Crapper" invented the flush toilet. Tom Crapper did exist, but the word has several possible roots from Dutch, French and Old English words generally used to describe the off casts or rubbish from sorting.

Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens.