A little over a year ago, I finally found out what NATCH means. For the longest time, I thought NATCH was some sort of tourettic way of throwing someone off. It wasn’t that at all.
There are words and phrases I have used nearly all of my life. And if spoken, only some of them happen to fall within what the Catholics call a cardinal sin. I am guilty of using these from time to time without giving much thought towards what it is they actually mean or where it is they come from.
A few weeks ago, Toby shared with me the origin of SHIT. Now neither one of us wrote the Book of Shit. So we can’t be certain this is factual, but it does makes some sense. I guess I’m willing to believe that at least part of it is true. Back in the day, they used to ship dry manure and waste via boats from one place to another, places where there wasn’t a lot of livestock and the like. They shipped it dry, in the hull of the boat. Over time, the dry manure would get wet (for obvious reasons) producing methane gas. Several ships were lost due to explosions. So they moved the SHIT above. And this is when SHIT came about, standing for
Ship High In Transit
See? That word ain’t so bad. SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT.
Now let’s talk about FUCK. Fuck apparently stands for:
Fornication Under Consent of the King
But I’m not so sure about that.
Last night, after calling someone a SCUMBAG, I was enlightened with its meaning. I had no idea that SCUMBAG refers to a condom, natch. Did you? I would have guessed it to be some sort of fish chum bag or something. Who knew all this time I’ve been calling people everywhere condoms?
Sorry, but that shit didn’t sound right to me. I knew the German word scheissen was related etymologically, so I googled shit and found that it had an old english root. I also found this (scroll down on the page)
http://www.wordorigins.org/wordors.htm
The site also debunks the acronym origin of fuck http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorf.htm and I also learned the word Booze predates the famous liquor bottler’s name to which most ascribe its origin (http://www.wordorigins.org/wordorb.htm ).
I had a feeling it wasn’t true as well when I first heard it. And just think, someday someone will google shit or fuck and find this and think it’s true. I’m now perpetuating a possible lie.
And the FUCK thing seemed way way off to me as well.
“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.”
ha ha ha! I am utterly false indeed. Who talks like this? Is this person British? (Any news on the word Scumbag?)
i always thought ‘scumbag’ was referring to a scrotum. and speaking of scumbags, i thought ‘shit’ came from Sammy Hagar Is Terrible.
ha!
Rachel, you’re dead on. There is no need for this stupid David Wilton character who just happen to be the first guy to purchase “wordorigins.org”
I always thought FUCK was “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”…(I know there is a Van Halen album with this name as well) for some reason I thought that this was the sentence given to persons who were found guilty of commiting adultery back in the day.
i don’t care where swearwords come from. just don’t take them away from me, they’re the only thing that makes me cool!
(I may have told this story before)
I remember the first time I ever heard Owen, my 4 year old, swear. We were driving home from his friend’s birthday party, and it is now de rigueur for hosts to provide guests with goodie bags—usually filled with candy and cheap crap. These were nice bags, though, filled with lovely colored pencils and doodle pads.
As we were driving home I heard him open his bag and discover its contents. “Hey! There’s no candy in here!” he said. “Son of a BITCH!”
A couple of weeks ago, as I was doing something in the kitchen (I can’t remember), and for some reason I yelled “Shit!” My older son Henry, who has learned about my profanity, said “I don’t know what that word means, but I’m not going to repeat it!”
GotJesus? You never told me that story. Love it.
There is something wonderful about screaming SON OF A BITCH! I don’t know what it is, but I like it. Almost as much as I like the word bastard. Yes. Bastard.
I am going to rotate “Son of the bitch” into my vocabulary because it is currently terribly underutilized.
This does remind me of my first foray into the world of cuss words. When my brother was a baby (which means I would have been about 5), we were playing in a laundry basket. (What? I don’t know.) My parents wanted to run and get the camera and I was shrieking that I couldn’t sit in there any longer because Patrick (who must have been sans diaper) was “going to piss all over me”. My dad laughed and laughed, and my mom…..well, she was pissed.
Ahhhhh Missy. I read that out loud for the entire house to hear.