How and when did this term come to mean a statement one doesn’t believe? Why this particular animal excrement and not others?
Is ‘bullshit’ also a term of disbelief in other culture’s languages? If not, what is their term?
Of course, “horseshit” is also commonly used to convey the same idea of disbelief. My favorite non-excrement related expression of this type is “hogwash”.
Bullshit is usually translated (in movies) as kusotare. This is an angry “bullshit”.
Literal bullshit is ushiunko. It’s not used as a term of disbelief. ushi is bull. unko is shit.
To describe a person who is bullshit (i.e. full of shit) a good term is horafuki.
Since “bullshit” is used so many different ways in English - like most curse words - it’s hard to get a one-to-one translation.
Well hotshit, the board ain’t exactly apeshit over this one, but at least it’s not dogshit. Hey, gimme some of that, that’s good shit–I don’t wanna drink any of this fishshit. I feel like cowshit. Peace, remember, we’re all just starshit.
Actually, I’ve usually heard the reply “Ah, horseshit!” to mean sort of like “F*** you”, rather than expressing doubts about the truth of what was said.
From http://www.m-w.com
"Main Entry: 1bull·shit
Pronunciation: 'bul-"shit also 'b&l-
Function: noun
Etymology: 1bull & 6bull
Date: circa 1915
usually vulgar : NONSENSE; especially : foolish insolent talk "
Also…
"Main Entry: 6bull
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from obsolete bull to mock
Date: 1640
1 : a grotesque blunder in language
2 slang : empty boastful talk
3 slang : NONSENSE 2 "
And even further back…
"Main Entry: 5bull
Date: 1609
transitive senses slang : to fool especially by fast boastful talk
intransitive senses, slang : to engage in idle and boastful talk "
Thanks for finding the ‘when,’ but the ‘why’ is still kind of unclear to me. Seems like horses, cows, chickens and sheep would have been more prevalent, and thus more likely to have their poop immortalized in such a way.
Indian (counter-spy like) trackers used to send cowboys who were looking for Indians to harm on the trail of free roaming cattle claiming it to be from the Indian’s horses. And of course the Indians would get away slicker’n owl shit all the while grinnin’ like a possom eatin’ shit out of a coke bottle.
I always took horseshit to mean not so much ‘f**k you’ as ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about’ as opposed to BS which usually means you are intentionally lying.
In Texas, a common phrase for a hangover is feeling like “40 foot of stomped out buzzard shit”.
Once I saw “frogshit” written as graffiti -still cracks me up.
The thing is on questions like this, it’s got to be something. Why NOT bullshit? Why do they use green to mean ‘go’ on traffic lights? No real reason, it’s got to be some color.
And that’s no duckshit.
When in polite society, use “male bovine excretia”.
Milo,
Chickenshit has been immortalized in this fashion.
All be it a different meaning.
Just as practically any animal is likened to a human trait (he/she is a fox/dog/bantam/sloth/mouse/snake), so too is those animals’ excrement used in different ways, but almost universally negative.
In Citizen Soldiers, Stephen Ambrose (with ample help from Paul Fussell) closely defines one common military term:
*The guys who were permanent jerks were the usual suspects – officers with too much authority and too few brains, sergeants who had more than a touch of sadist in their characters, far too many quartermasters, some MPs. The types were many in number and widely varied in how they acted out their role, but the GIs had a single word that applied to every one of them: chickenshit.
Fussell defines the term precisely. “Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige…insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances. Chickenshit is so called – instead of horse – or bull – or elephant shit – because it is small-minded and ignoble and takes the trivial seriously. Chickenshit can be recognized instantly because it never has anything to do with winning the war.” *
And shortly after this passage, one of my favorite statements in military history:
“General Patton had more than a bit of the chickenshit in him.”
Note a mistake: sloth was laziness before Bradypus spp. was a sloth. The word comes from slow + th.
any body else find it funny that saying something is “SHIT” is an insult, but saying it is “THE SHIT” is a high compliment, at least in youth culture?
I finally found some definitive shit… “On Bullshit” Harry Frankfurt-Princeton University
The most authoritative shit on bullshit.