I thought this was fucking hilarious
Usage
The word shit (or sometimes shite - to rhyme with bite - in Scotland, Ireland, Northern England and Wales) is used by English speakers, but it is usually avoided in formal speech.
In the word's literal sense, it has a rather small range of common usages. An unspecified or collective occurrence of feces is generally shit or some shit; a single deposit of feces is sometimes a shit or a piece of shit, and to defecate is to shit, or counterintuitively, to take a shit. While it is common to speak of shit as existing in a pile, a load, a hunk and other quantities and configurations, such expressions flourish most strongly in the figurative. For practical purposes, when actual defecation and excreta are spoken of in English, it is either through creative euphemism or with a vague and fairly rigid literalism. Substitutes for the word shit in English include sugar and shoot.
Shit carries an encompassing variety of figurative meanings. Of these, perhaps the most common are generic expressions of displeasure (as in, Shit!), fear (Oh, shit!), or surprise (Holy shit!).
Interestingly, in slang, prefixing the article the to shit gives it a completely opposite definition, meaning "The Best", as in "Altered Beast is the shit," or "Oregon Trail is the dope shit."
Shit denotes trouble, as in, I was in a lot of shit; low quality, as in, That disk drive is shit (see "piece of shit" below); unpleasantness, as in, Those pants look like shit, or This brown stuff tastes a bit like shit; or falsehood or insincerity, as in, Don't give me that shit, or You're full of shit or surprised anger Jim is totally going to flip his shit when he sees that we wrecked his marriage. Sometimes using shit to denote anger will be heard in the phrase shit a brick. The word bullshit also denotes false or insincere discourse. (Horseshit is roughly equivalent, while chickenshit means cowardly, batshit indicates a person is crazy, and going apeshit indicates a person is entering a state of high excitement or unbridled rage.). Are you shitting me!? is a question sometimes given in response to an incredible assertion. An answer that reasserts the veracity of the claim is, I shit you not.
The expression no shit? (a contraction of no bullshit?) is used in response to a statement that is extraordinary or hard to believe. Alternatively the maker of the hard to believe statement may add "no shit" to reinforce the sincerity or truthfulness of their statement, particularly in response to someone expressing disbelief at their statement. "No shit" is also used sarcastically in response to a statement of the obvious, as in no shit Sherlock.
Shit can also be used to establish superiority over another being. The most common phrase is "Eat Shit!" symbolizing the hatred toward the recipient. Some other personal word may be added such as "Eat my shit" implying truly personal connotations. As an aside, the above is actually a contraction of the phrase "eat shit and die!". It is often said without commas as a curse; they with the other party to perform exactly those actions in that order. However, the term was originally "Eat, Shit, and Die" naming the three most basic things humans have to do, and it is common among soldiers.
Shit can also be used as a comparative noun; for instance, This show is funny shit or This test is hard shit, or That was stupid shit. These three usages (with funny, hard, and stupid or another synonym of stupid) are heard most commonly in the United States. Note that shit is both a positive and negative thing in these examples, shit being apparently very funny (a positive thing) and in the second and third examples very hard (as in, difficult- a negative thing to be) or very stupid. Note also that in a phrase like this, the speaker doesn't include the term as before the comparison; saying that something is as funny as shit would sound like a criticism to anyone reading the term (shit not being a very funny thing to be), although if spoken could be understood along with the spirit it's said in. Using the as changes these phrases from a simple colloquialism to a literal statement.
Shit can comfortably stand in for the terms bad and anything in many instances (Dinner was good, but the movie was shit. You're all mad at me, but I didn't do shit!). Many usages are idiomatic. The phrase, I don't give a shit denotes indifference. I'm shit out of luck usually refers to someone who is at the end of their wits or who has no remaining viable options. That little shit shot me in the ass, suggests a mischievous or contemptuous person. However, in such a nominative construction, crap (as in, That little crap shot me in the ass) is not accepted in vernacular English. Of further note is that little shit is common as a term of opprobrium, while big shit is unfamiliar, and that direct scatological appellations are rarely applied to females, for whom gender-specific terms such as bitch or cunt more readily accrue. (However, in Britain and Australia, the term cunt is used to refer to men very much more frequently than to women)
The term piece of shit is generally used to classify a product or service as being sufficiently below the writer's understanding of generally accepted quality standards to be of negligible and perhaps even negative value.The term piece of shit has greater precision than shit or shitty in that piece of shit identifies the low quality of a specific component or output of a process without applying a derogatory slant to the entire process. For example, if one said "The inner city youth orchestra has been a remarkably successful initiative in that it has kept young people off the streets after school and exposed them to culture and discipline, thereby improving their self esteem and future prospects. The fact that the orchestra's recent rendition of Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony in B minor was pretty much a piece of shit should not in any way detract from this." The substitution of shit or shitty for pretty much a piece of shit would imply irony and would therefore undermine the strength of the statement.
In Get your shit together! the word 'shit' may refer to some set of personal belongings or tools, or to one's wits, composure, or attention to the task at hand. He doesn't have his shit together suggests he is failing rather broadly, with the onus laid to multiple personal shortcomings, rather than bad luck or outside forces. Shit can even be a plain, neuter pronoun for basically anything in vulgar speech. For instance, in There is some serious shit going down shit can easily be replaced by stuff with no real loss of meaning (the same goes for Get your shit together! and the like).
To "shoot the shit" refers to having a friendly but pointless conversation. "Come by my place some time and we'll shoot the shit."
"When the shit hits the fan" is usually used to refer to a specific time of confrontation or trouble, which requires decisive action. This is often used in reference to combat situations and the action scenes in movies, but can also be used for everyday instances that one might be apprehensive about. "I don't want to be here when the shit hits the fan!" indicates that the speaker is dreading this moment (which can be anything from an enemy attack to confronting an angry parent or friend). "He's the one to turn to when the shit hits the fan." is an indication that the person being talked about is dependable and will not run from trouble or abandon their allies in tough situations. The concept of this phrase is simple enough, as the actual substance striking the rotating blades of a fan would cause a messy and unpleasant situation (much like being in the presence of a manure spreader). Whether or not this has actually happened, or if the concept is simply feasible enough for most people to imagine the result without needing it to be demonstrated, is unknown. Another example might be the saying "Shit rolls down hill" particularly illustrating, the consequences of putting your superiors in a bad position at work. There are a number of anecdotes and jokes about such situations, as the imagery of these situations is considered to be funny. This is generally tied-in with the concept that disgusting and messy substances spilled onto someone else are humorous.
While the most common uses of shit are figurative, the unpleasant substance to which the term literally refers is seldom entirely absent, and thus most uses of shit have some degree of pejoration. But this is far from a universal rule: In some styles of discourse, shit can replace nearly any noun. In the sentence, "I bought a bunch of shit at the store today", shit is merely a casual intensification of the term, stuff. Similarly, Check that shit out! connotes surprise at some sort of stuff or activity that could very well be pleasant. Give me a bite of that shit implies a deliciousness notably absent from the literal substance. It's common for someone to refer to an unpleasant thing as hard shit (You got a speeding ticket? Man, that's some hard shit), but the phrase tough shit is used as an unsympathetic way of saying too bad to whomever is having problems (You got arrested? Tough shit, man!) or as a way of expressing to someone that they need to stop complaining about a negative thing that occurred to them and just deal with it (Billy: I got arrested because of you! Tommy: Tough shit, dude, you knew you might get arrested when you chose to come with me.) Note that in this case, as in many cases with the term, tough shit is often said as a way of pointing out someone's fault in his/her own current problem. To drug users, shit almost always refers to a drug being discussed. This was a secret code in the early 60s, and though most people now understand phrases like "I bought some good shit today, I can't wait to try it", the phrase is still common.
Perhaps the only constant connotation that shit reliably carries is that the referent to which it applies holds some degree of emotional intensity for the speaker. Whether offense is taken at hearing the word varies greatly according to listener and situation, and is related to age and social class: elderly speakers and those of (or aspiring to) higher socioeconomic strata tend to use it more privately and selectively than younger and more blue-collar speakers. Moreover, in some colloquial speech, calling something or someone the shit is laudatory. For instance, Dave's new car is the shit, suggests that Dave's new car is very good, or very cool. This meaning is also essentially a substitution for the term stuff, but is also similar to the vernacular usage of bad to mean dangerous and deserving of respect. Crap is unknown in such locutions.
To "ruin someone's shit" or "destroy someone's shit" or to "fuck up someone's shit" etc. is often used to say some "shit" is going down and you probably need to call the police. Also, it can mean some one is going to get beat up or in a friendlier environment it can just mean to win convincingly so much so that derisive comments are required.
In polite company, sometimes the backronym Sugar Honey in Tea or Sugar Honey Iced Tea is used.
Shit (like fuck) is often used more to add emphasis than meaning: Shit! I was so shit-scared of that shithead that I shit-talked him into dropping out of the karate match. The term, to shit-talk, connotes bragging or exaggeration (whereas to talk shit primarily means to gossip [about someone in a damaging way] or to talk in a boastful way about things which are erroneous in nature), but in such constructions as the above, the word shit often functions as an interjection. Euphemisms for shit in this usage include shoot, shucks, and in Hiberno-English sugar and its Irish equivalent siúcra (pronounced [ʃuːkrə].
Shit itself can be a quasi-euphemism, many illicit drugs (notably hashish) being referred to as shit. To be shitfaced is to be extremely drunk.
"Shit" can also be combined with other words to denote the type of feces one has. For instance, "Snake shit" describes feces that are long and slender in shape thus reminiscent of a snake's appearance. "Shapeepee" or "Shit pee pee" is another word for diarrhea or can be used to describe feces that are almost entirely of liquid composition.
The verb to shit
The verb, to shit, is most commonly used to refer to the literal act of defecation, but it can also mean to treat badly or to humiliate (I got shit on for being late, He shat all over my project), or to produce something carelessly (I was hoping for a project we could all be proud of, but Dave just goes and shits something out at the last minute).
The preterite and past participle of shit are attested as shat, shit, or shitted, depending on dialect and, sometimes, the rhythm of the sentence. In the Prologue of the Canterbury Tales, shitten is used as the past participle; however this form is very rare in modern English. In American English shit as a past participle is always correct, while shat is generally acceptable and shitted is uncommon.
Subject: lol... the official wiki page for "Shit" 
Thu Mar 06, 2008 12:24 pm
