The Daily Squid » Language

PAST TENSE POO

Dave White — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:59 +0000

A lot of people seem to get a big kick out of the word “shat,” even though “shitted” is a much more eloquent variant.

I certainly see the appeal. Shat would seem to be the standard and historic preterite/past participle of everyone’s favorite smelly verb, and so its presence in a sentence inevitably invokes a nice bit of tension between the strict gramatic traditionalism and the inevitable vulgarity. (It even works when constructing haughty blog posts!)

But shitted is poetry; much more expressive, funnier, a surprising and livley addition to any BM-related anecdote.

BRIAN: And then who walks into the Bratskellar? BAM! Wayne Brady!
FRANCIS: What did you do?
BRIAN: I totally shitted myself.

GRANDMA: I just shitted that entire bag of Sugar Free LifeSavers.

As with anything, much depends on the rythm of the sentence, the relationship between fellow nearby words, adjacent phonemes, etc.. But pounds for donuts, shitted is a far more engaging option. Try it with friends.

BONUS!
In Canterbury Tales, Chaucer uses “shitten.” Not bad!

IN SEARCH OF THE GENDER NEUTRAL PRONOUN

Dave White — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:00:00 +0000

As further evidence that Twitter has taken over all manners of human communication, CNN writes up a little tweetish battle over the ellusive search for a gender neutral pronoun:

“Can’t we English-speakers just agree upon a gender-neutral pronoun?” attorney Paul Easton recently Twittered. “Tired of PC grammar gymnastics.”

…

Consider the sentence “Everyone loves his mother.” The word “his” may be seen as both sexist and inaccurate, but replacing it with “his or her” seems cumbersome, and “their” is grammatically incorrect.

But that’s silly. “Their” is it! “Their” is what we agreed upon! “Their” is the daring little pronoun the English language chose!

If we’re in such desperate need of a gender neutral pronoun, then we should simply stop correcting people when they say “everyone loves their mother.” How is using their in that sentence any more grammatically incorrect than using ip or thon or any of the other nonsense word jabberwoky the article mentions?

Sure it might be slightly messy or logically inconsistent, but 1) this is English, the bastard stepchild of tribal West Germany and whoreish France, and 2) we’ve actually been using a singular they for like 600 years.

Some old school English speaker had a problem, and they* solved it! A long time ago, and no one seemed to notice.

* See! See!

OHIO

Dave White — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 03:59:22 +0000

Ohio is a palindrome of noise.

UPDATE: Wait…no it’s not.

MARILYN

Dave White — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 03:30:14 +0000

The name “Marilyn” is a funny word to spell; I don’t think many people would ever spell it wrong, but it’s almost impossible to type very quickly. Marilyn. I can’t type it without thinking about its spelling, which usually isn’t the case with words I know how to spell.

Marilyn.

An easily spelled word that must be spelled laboriously.