Shipping Manure

[Jai Dee]

In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship.

It was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large shipments of manure were common.

It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.

As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen.

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 the cause was determined.

After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term, "Ship High In Transit" 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," 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 always thought it was a golf term.

[Jockstar]

In the 16th and 17th centuries, everything had to be transported by ship.

It was also before commercial fertilizer's invention, so large shipments of manure were common.

It was shipped dry, because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet, but once water (at sea) hit it, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began again, of which a by-product is methane gas.

As the stuff was stored below decks in bundles you can see what could (and did) happen.

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 the cause was determined.

After that, the bundles of manure were always stamped with the term, "Ship High In Transit" 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," 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 always thought it was a golf term.

Is this actually true? Sounds like shit to me.

[Thetyim]

Shit is a very old word, with an Old English root. *Scítan is the Old English word. It has cognates in most of the other Germanic languages and shares a common Germanic root with modern equivalents like the German scheissen.

*Scítan, however, doesn't appear in extant Old English texts and is only assumed to have existed in Old English. The verb to shit dates the Middle English period (c. 1308), and the noun form is from the 16th century. The interjection is of quite recent vintage, not found until the 1920s.

In 2002, an alleged acronymic origin for shit 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.

[khunlungphudhu]

Jai Dee's explanation was more humorous, and it is on the jokes page. :cowboy: