When someone is “shit”… That’s bad
When someone “ain’t shit”… That’s also bad
When someone is “the shit”… That’s good!
???
Please help
Shieeet: amazed, wow
Nice shit: good stuff
No shit: obvious
Holy shit: surprise
It’s a swiss army knife of english word. Actually it’s rather similar with mandarin, a single word alone mean something, adding different word front or behind will change its meaning.
For example, 害(haì) can mean something bad or harmful or causation, 害怕(haì pà) mean scared or fearful, while 厉害(lì haì) mean something awesome or incredible, and 受害者(shòu haì zhě) mean victim
Bad words just become extreme. The modify the emotion. They often don’t mean anything literally. You have to look for other clues or just memorize the terms.
This is more related to the definite vs indefinite article (the vs a) and how that changes meaning in English.
“shit” expresses excitement. And just like excitement, that can be good or bad.
This won’t help, but it’s fun: https://youtu.be/igh9iO5BxBo?si=oyLAwhvrhsR4FHSZ
Beat me to it. Perfect for this post.
Saw the question and thought of exactly this video. Great skit.
I’mma click, removing Google’s tracker first
Oh yeah this guy he’s good!
ISMO is awesome.
He’s the shit.
That shits wicked.
And don’t forget the division. A piece of shit, is bad, like a car that won’t start, or a selfish person. A big piece of shit or a huge piece of shit is worse, but it’s never a whole shit, because then it would be The shit, and good.
Words don’t all have meaning in isolation. :) The examples you give just have meaning based on the combination of words.
A bit like letters. We don’t think “r” is contradictory because in “fart” it describes something foul and it “tart” it describes somerthing tasty.
How about horseshit, apeshit, batshit, dogshit, and probably lots more. Each of these has a pretty specific use case
Not to mention bullshit.
The difference between shit and shite
Kevin Bridges
Their tone or inflection as well as context and social ques are important qualities to distinguish the intent.
Additionally, there are many idioms that you’ll just need to know to properly get it. (You can think of idioms like kanji or memes if that helps.)
I think they are pronounced shitiodms.
When it comes to the mess that history has made of English, Susie Dent should be sought for guidance.
I would add:
Shit head: a negative term for a person who likely is toxic or caustic for other negative reasons
Shitter: a person who may enjoy shit head humor. One who shit is not necessarily negative like shit head. Could be used to casually downplay a type of humor (lightly positive) or to dismiss a type of behavior (lightly negative)
There’s also “enshittification”, which has an entire Wikipedia article solely about it. Everyone has heard about it at this point.