WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.040 Imagine a word so volatile that network television 00:00:04.040 --> 00:00:06.700 banned it for decades. Right. Completely off 00:00:06.700 --> 00:00:08.939 limits. But at the same time it's so essential 00:00:08.939 --> 00:00:11.759 that global health workers literally rely on 00:00:11.759 --> 00:00:15.339 it to save lives. Yeah. It's it's a wild paradox 00:00:15.339 --> 00:00:17.300 because usually when you open the dictionary 00:00:17.300 --> 00:00:19.780 there's this expectation of order. You know for 00:00:19.780 --> 00:00:22.219 sure. Nouns over here verbs over there. Exactly. 00:00:22.539 --> 00:00:24.899 Every word has a clear definition and just stays 00:00:24.899 --> 00:00:27.480 safely within its designated lane. Right. But 00:00:27.480 --> 00:00:30.739 today. We are, we're skipping the polite sections. 00:00:31.039 --> 00:00:33.539 We are opening the dictionary to its messiest, 00:00:33.659 --> 00:00:36.020 most untamed page. Oh yeah, we're getting it 00:00:36.020 --> 00:00:37.740 with. Because we need to look at a word that 00:00:37.740 --> 00:00:40.490 defies... basically every rule we learned in 00:00:40.490 --> 00:00:42.689 grade school. We really are. We're diving into 00:00:42.689 --> 00:00:46.170 the Wikipedia page for a highly unusual, definitely 00:00:46.170 --> 00:00:49.450 slightly taboo, but incredibly fascinating subject. 00:00:50.030 --> 00:00:52.189 We're talking about the versatile four letter 00:00:52.189 --> 00:00:55.810 word S -H -I -T. Yep, the big one. And whether 00:00:55.810 --> 00:00:58.429 you drop it into casual conversation on a daily 00:00:58.429 --> 00:01:01.210 basis or you actively avoid it at all costs, 00:01:01.570 --> 00:01:03.789 you have a relationship with this word. Oh, absolutely. 00:01:03.969 --> 00:01:07.450 Everyone does. And the mission of this Custom 00:01:07.450 --> 00:01:10.650 -tailored deep dive is to prove to you that this 00:01:10.650 --> 00:01:13.689 isn't just like modern slang or vulgarity Just 00:01:13.689 --> 00:01:16.790 for the sake of shock value. Yeah, it's an absolute 00:01:16.790 --> 00:01:19.329 master class in linguistic evolution. Okay, let's 00:01:19.329 --> 00:01:21.269 unpack this Let's do it. So our goal today is 00:01:21.269 --> 00:01:24.109 to move right past that initial taboo We're going 00:01:24.109 --> 00:01:27.349 to examine its ancient etymology, the surprising 00:01:27.349 --> 00:01:30.670 grammatical gymnastics our brains unconsciously 00:01:30.670 --> 00:01:32.450 perform to use it. Which is my favorite part, 00:01:32.530 --> 00:01:35.170 by the way. Right. It's so cool. And we'll also 00:01:35.170 --> 00:01:37.849 look at its rocky history in media and censorship. 00:01:38.090 --> 00:01:41.310 And then finally, its highly effective real -world 00:01:41.310 --> 00:01:44.370 utility in global public health. Yeah. So before 00:01:44.370 --> 00:01:46.370 we can even begin to understand how you or I 00:01:46.370 --> 00:01:48.790 might use this word today, We need to know where 00:01:48.790 --> 00:01:51.230 it came from. We have to go way back. Exactly. 00:01:51.349 --> 00:01:53.549 Yeah. Because this is not some recent invention 00:01:53.549 --> 00:01:56.109 by, you know, rebellious teenagers. This is a 00:01:56.109 --> 00:01:58.790 rugged, ancient piece of human history. It really 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:01.489 is. The word is likely derived from Old English. 00:02:01.890 --> 00:02:04.870 So back before the Norman conquest, speakers 00:02:04.870 --> 00:02:08.729 used the noun sight. S -C -I -T -E. OK, sight. 00:02:08.949 --> 00:02:11.830 Yeah. And it was heavily used to describe dung. 00:02:12.509 --> 00:02:15.610 Mostly appearing in, like, geographical place 00:02:15.610 --> 00:02:17.810 names, actually. Wait, really? Just naming places 00:02:17.810 --> 00:02:20.439 after Dung? Basically, yeah. And they also use 00:02:20.439 --> 00:02:23.500 the variation site to describe diarrhea and the 00:02:23.500 --> 00:02:27.060 verb scetan, which meant to defecate. Wow. And 00:02:27.060 --> 00:02:29.599 I mean, as the language evolved into Middle English, 00:02:29.819 --> 00:02:32.659 it morphed into Shet, right? Exactly. Which makes 00:02:32.659 --> 00:02:34.300 total sense when you look at how agricultural 00:02:34.300 --> 00:02:38.580 societies operated. But the real linguistic archaeology 00:02:38.580 --> 00:02:40.919 goes much further back than Old English. Oh, 00:02:40.919 --> 00:02:43.060 it goes way back. It traces all the way back 00:02:43.060 --> 00:02:46.599 to Proto -Germanic with the root skit SKIT with 00:02:46.599 --> 00:02:48.860 a hyphen. And I love how linguists figure this 00:02:48.860 --> 00:02:51.180 out, because it's not like they have written 00:02:51.180 --> 00:02:53.379 records of this, right? Right, no written records 00:02:53.379 --> 00:02:55.639 at all. The way they figure it out is by looking 00:02:55.639 --> 00:02:58.479 at its modern Germanic cousins scattered all 00:02:58.479 --> 00:03:01.580 across Europe today. So you have the German Scheisse, 00:03:01.979 --> 00:03:05.199 the Dutch Schiet, the Swedish Skit, the Icelandic 00:03:05.199 --> 00:03:07.099 Skitor. And they basically just reverse engineer 00:03:07.099 --> 00:03:10.080 it. Exactly. By reverse engineering the phonetic 00:03:10.080 --> 00:03:12.620 shifts in all those modern languages, linguists 00:03:12.620 --> 00:03:15.860 can pinpoint the exact ancestral root they all 00:03:15.860 --> 00:03:18.759 share. That is just so cool. And that leads us 00:03:18.759 --> 00:03:23.020 to the absolute best part of this archaeological 00:03:23.020 --> 00:03:25.860 dig, which is the Proto -Indo -European root, 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.259 like the granddaddy of the word. Yeah, the P 00:03:28.259 --> 00:03:31.680 -I -E root. It's S -K -A -D -S -K -H -E -I -D. 00:03:31.840 --> 00:03:33.960 And it literally translates to the action of 00:03:33.960 --> 00:03:37.020 to cut or separate. Which is just, I mean, poetic 00:03:37.020 --> 00:03:39.479 irony of the highest order. It really is. A word 00:03:39.479 --> 00:03:42.949 for bodily waste. shares the exact same linguistic 00:03:42.949 --> 00:03:46.069 DNA as the concept of shedding or separating 00:03:46.069 --> 00:03:48.090 from the body. Because it's literally what your 00:03:48.090 --> 00:03:49.930 body is shedding. Right. It's the physical act 00:03:49.930 --> 00:03:52.930 of separation. And just to clear the air for 00:03:52.930 --> 00:03:54.550 anyone wondering about the medical side of things. 00:03:55.080 --> 00:03:57.580 It is completely unrelated to the ancient Greek 00:03:57.580 --> 00:04:00.500 word ster. Oh, right, which gives us the medical 00:04:00.500 --> 00:04:03.419 prefix scato, like scatology. Exactly. Two totally 00:04:03.419 --> 00:04:05.939 different family trees. Yeah. And what's fascinating 00:04:05.939 --> 00:04:08.680 here is that preliterate Germanic tribes were 00:04:08.680 --> 00:04:11.500 likely using a version of this exact word at 00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:13.860 the very same time the Roman Empire was at its 00:04:13.860 --> 00:04:16.560 peak. That's crazy to think about. Right. Like, 00:04:16.600 --> 00:04:20.160 when you use it today, you aren't just swearing. 00:04:20.379 --> 00:04:24.129 You are connecting directly to an ancient visceral 00:04:24.129 --> 00:04:26.209 piece of human history. Yeah, it survived the 00:04:26.209 --> 00:04:28.410 fall of empires, the Norman conquest, centuries 00:04:28.410 --> 00:04:31.350 of linguistic overhaul. And not only did it survive, 00:04:31.649 --> 00:04:34.730 it adapted. It completely adapted. It morphed 00:04:34.730 --> 00:04:37.769 into a modern multipurpose tool. I mean, it's 00:04:37.769 --> 00:04:40.149 less like a Swiss army knife and more like linguistic 00:04:40.149 --> 00:04:42.069 stem cells. Oh, I like that comparison. Yeah, 00:04:42.069 --> 00:04:43.970 because it has no fixed shape until you put it 00:04:43.970 --> 00:04:46.589 in a sentence and then it instantly morphs into 00:04:46.589 --> 00:04:48.790 whatever grammatical tissue you need. That's 00:04:48.790 --> 00:04:50.990 a great way to put it, because in its literal 00:04:50.990 --> 00:04:53.420 sense, it has a surprise. a surprisingly small 00:04:53.420 --> 00:04:56.800 range of uses, right? Just describing a deposit 00:04:56.800 --> 00:04:59.819 of feces or the act of defecating. Right, just 00:04:59.819 --> 00:05:03.519 the basic biology. But figuratively, it has completely 00:05:03.519 --> 00:05:05.920 taken over the English language. It frequently 00:05:05.920 --> 00:05:08.800 functions as a vague generic mass noun very similar 00:05:08.800 --> 00:05:11.180 to the word stuff. You hear it all the time, 00:05:11.319 --> 00:05:12.639 especially in the United States. Someone will 00:05:12.639 --> 00:05:15.139 say, this show is funny as shit. Yeah, exactly. 00:05:15.439 --> 00:05:18.949 Or get your shit together. Which, by the way, 00:05:18.970 --> 00:05:20.449 if you tell someone they don't have their shit 00:05:20.449 --> 00:05:22.529 together, it doesn't mean they've just run into 00:05:22.529 --> 00:05:25.350 bad luck. No. It's a very specific critique. 00:05:25.589 --> 00:05:27.589 Right. It specifically means their affairs are 00:05:27.589 --> 00:05:29.889 disordered because of their own personal shortcomings. 00:05:30.069 --> 00:05:33.370 Yeah. And then you can even shoot the shit, which 00:05:33.370 --> 00:05:36.410 strips the word of any negative connotation completely. 00:05:36.490 --> 00:05:38.610 It just means having a friendly, you know, pointless 00:05:38.610 --> 00:05:40.949 conversation. Exactly. And then there's this 00:05:40.949 --> 00:05:44.089 incredible dichotomy created by simply adding 00:05:44.089 --> 00:05:46.610 an article to the word. Oh, sis, my favorite 00:05:46.610 --> 00:05:50.009 part. Like... If you call an object a piece of 00:05:50.009 --> 00:05:53.529 shit, you are denoting exactly poor quality. 00:05:53.730 --> 00:05:55.449 Right. It's a very precise insult. You aren't 00:05:55.449 --> 00:05:58.050 saying the whole process is bad. Just that specific 00:05:58.050 --> 00:06:00.689 component. But if you prefix it with the like 00:06:00.689 --> 00:06:03.910 the shit. Yeah. It completely flips. It suddenly 00:06:03.910 --> 00:06:06.689 means the absolute best. It does. But I have 00:06:06.689 --> 00:06:08.790 to push back here, though. OK, go for it. Calling 00:06:08.790 --> 00:06:10.949 something this shit just sounds like, you know, 00:06:11.170 --> 00:06:14.850 1990s hip hop slang. Yeah. Are linguists really 00:06:14.850 --> 00:06:17.920 treating a modern slang trend? as a fundamental 00:06:17.920 --> 00:06:20.379 grammatical rule of the word? They absolutely 00:06:20.379 --> 00:06:23.420 are, because it highlights how syntax dictates 00:06:23.420 --> 00:06:26.000 meaning faster than the dictionary does. Okay, 00:06:26.060 --> 00:06:29.060 how so? Well, think about it. You cannot say 00:06:29.060 --> 00:06:32.000 something is the crap or the garbage and have 00:06:32.000 --> 00:06:35.199 it mean supreme excellence. Oh, wow. Yeah, you're 00:06:35.199 --> 00:06:37.360 right. That doesn't work at all. Right. The human 00:06:37.360 --> 00:06:40.300 brain effortlessly processes a sentence where 00:06:40.300 --> 00:06:43.560 this one specific vulgarity means the highest 00:06:43.560 --> 00:06:46.379 possible praise purely based on the presence 00:06:46.379 --> 00:06:50.290 of the word thee. That is wild. And this extreme 00:06:50.290 --> 00:06:52.970 versatility is taken so seriously by academics 00:06:52.970 --> 00:06:56.069 that a study published in 2017 actually argued 00:06:56.069 --> 00:06:58.910 for a cross -disciplinary metafield called shit 00:06:58.910 --> 00:07:01.250 studies. Shit studies? You're telling me some 00:07:01.250 --> 00:07:02.750 rhetorician actually had to stand in front of 00:07:02.750 --> 00:07:04.550 a committee and defend that grand proposal? They 00:07:04.550 --> 00:07:06.430 did, and they won the argument. That's amazing. 00:07:06.649 --> 00:07:09.569 Yeah. The study examined rhetoric and human communication, 00:07:09.730 --> 00:07:12.069 specifically focusing on the mechanics of bullshit. 00:07:12.089 --> 00:07:14.610 OK. The researchers found that bullshit speech 00:07:14.610 --> 00:07:17.769 is fundamentally a one -sided discourse. It contains 00:07:17.769 --> 00:07:20.379 ideological barriers that basically block the 00:07:20.379 --> 00:07:22.560 expectation of mutuality. Wait, let's bring that 00:07:22.560 --> 00:07:24.040 down for the listener. What does that actually 00:07:24.040 --> 00:07:26.920 look like in practice? OK, so think about a scenario 00:07:26.920 --> 00:07:29.779 where you ask your boss why the departmental 00:07:29.779 --> 00:07:32.860 budget was cut. OK, relatable. Right. And instead 00:07:32.860 --> 00:07:35.360 of giving you a straight answer, they launch 00:07:35.360 --> 00:07:37.819 into a 10 -minute monologue about, you know, 00:07:38.019 --> 00:07:40.660 synergizing downstream corporate paradigms. Oh, 00:07:40.740 --> 00:07:43.920 yeah. The corporate word salad. Exactly. That 00:07:43.920 --> 00:07:46.279 is what the researchers classify as bullshit. 00:07:46.439 --> 00:07:49.560 By using dense, meaningless jargon to claim expertise 00:07:49.560 --> 00:07:52.060 on a topic, the speaker is setting up verbal 00:07:52.060 --> 00:07:55.220 barriers to deflect critical responses. Wow. 00:07:55.420 --> 00:07:57.660 So it's not just a word. It's an active shield 00:07:57.660 --> 00:08:00.720 against criticism. Exactly. And the study, which 00:08:00.720 --> 00:08:03.800 used examples ranging from antisemitism to elite 00:08:03.800 --> 00:08:05.720 wine tasting, shows that the vulgarity isn't 00:08:05.720 --> 00:08:08.199 just a bad word. Rhetoric scholars treat it as 00:08:08.199 --> 00:08:10.560 a serious metric for mapping how human beings 00:08:10.560 --> 00:08:12.759 manipulate communication and establish power 00:08:12.759 --> 00:08:16.129 dynamics. That is fascinating. And that perfectly 00:08:16.129 --> 00:08:18.629 transitions into how we use it for imagery, I 00:08:18.629 --> 00:08:21.129 think. Oh, definitely. Because the sheer flexibility 00:08:21.129 --> 00:08:24.050 of the word naturally leads into these highly 00:08:24.050 --> 00:08:28.250 visual, often darkly humorous idioms that describe 00:08:28.250 --> 00:08:31.110 human suffering and dominance. The visual mechanics 00:08:31.110 --> 00:08:34.250 of these idioms are incredibly striking. Like, 00:08:34.429 --> 00:08:37.669 if you are in severe difficulty with no apparent 00:08:37.669 --> 00:08:41.000 solution, you are... up shit creek or up shit 00:08:41.000 --> 00:08:43.360 creek without a paddle if things are really bad 00:08:43.360 --> 00:08:45.539 right and if a massive amount of trouble is happening 00:08:45.539 --> 00:08:47.919 all at once it's a shit storm here's where it 00:08:47.919 --> 00:08:51.169 gets really interesting All these idioms rely 00:08:51.169 --> 00:08:54.970 on a visceral, universal human disgust. Yeah, 00:08:55.110 --> 00:08:57.090 they really do. Think about the last time your 00:08:57.090 --> 00:08:58.909 car broke down on the highway at midnight and 00:08:58.909 --> 00:09:01.309 your phone died. Your brain doesn't reach for 00:09:01.309 --> 00:09:03.490 the word trouble. No, it doesn't. Your brain 00:09:03.490 --> 00:09:06.649 immediately reaches for I am up shit creek because 00:09:06.649 --> 00:09:08.889 it needs a word that matches your sudden spike 00:09:08.889 --> 00:09:11.210 in blood pressure. If we connect this to the 00:09:11.210 --> 00:09:13.950 bigger picture, the word reliably carries extreme 00:09:13.950 --> 00:09:17.049 emotional intensity. Like, trouble is an abstract 00:09:17.049 --> 00:09:19.570 intellectual concept. But when you say, when 00:09:19.570 --> 00:09:22.429 the shit hits the fan, you force the listener 00:09:22.429 --> 00:09:25.990 to instantly visualize a messy, highly unpleasant 00:09:25.990 --> 00:09:28.649 physical situation. Yeah, you really do. And 00:09:28.649 --> 00:09:30.809 that imagery actually stems from the literal 00:09:30.809 --> 00:09:33.610 mechanics of a manure spreader on a farm. Oh, 00:09:33.610 --> 00:09:36.750 wow. Really? Yeah. If that biological substance 00:09:36.750 --> 00:09:39.389 strikes the rotating blades of a fan, nobody 00:09:39.309 --> 00:09:42.009 he wants to be in the exact same room. It commands 00:09:42.009 --> 00:09:44.629 an instant universal understanding of chaos. 00:09:45.009 --> 00:09:47.490 It paints a very clear picture. Same with a shit 00:09:47.490 --> 00:09:50.610 sandwich. Oh yeah. It describes a terribly unpleasant 00:09:50.610 --> 00:09:53.649 situation made only slightly more palatable by 00:09:53.649 --> 00:09:56.129 packaging it in less unpleasant things. Right, 00:09:56.129 --> 00:09:59.090 like the old joke. Exactly. The joke is that 00:09:59.090 --> 00:10:01.710 life is a shit sandwich and the more bread meaning 00:10:01.710 --> 00:10:04.029 money you have, the less of the filling you have 00:10:04.029 --> 00:10:06.850 to eat. That's a classic. We also have deeply 00:10:06.850 --> 00:10:10.610 ingrained phrases like build like a brick shithouse. 00:10:10.789 --> 00:10:12.710 Which means two entirely different things depending 00:10:12.710 --> 00:10:14.490 on which hemisphere you are standing in. It does. 00:10:14.590 --> 00:10:17.669 It's so funny. Yeah. In the United States, it's 00:10:17.669 --> 00:10:20.009 traditionally used to compliment a curvaceous 00:10:20.009 --> 00:10:23.049 woman. But in other English speaking countries 00:10:23.049 --> 00:10:26.570 like Australia or the UK, it's used to compliment 00:10:26.570 --> 00:10:30.690 a highly athletic muscular man. And the origin 00:10:30.690 --> 00:10:33.029 of that phrase is purely architectural, which 00:10:33.029 --> 00:10:36.029 is why it denotes such sturdy physical presence. 00:10:36.210 --> 00:10:39.470 OK, how so? Well, historically, most outhouses 00:10:39.470 --> 00:10:43.549 were flimsy ramshackle affairs made of thin plywood 00:10:43.549 --> 00:10:46.950 or scrap sheets of metal, like a stiff wind could 00:10:46.950 --> 00:10:49.330 knock them over. Right. So an outhouse built 00:10:49.330 --> 00:10:52.269 out of solid brick was an absolute unit of construction. 00:10:52.470 --> 00:10:55.049 It was enduring. That makes so much sense. Just 00:10:55.049 --> 00:10:57.230 like the aphorism, you can't polish shit, which 00:10:57.230 --> 00:10:59.690 means you can't make something inherently bad 00:10:59.690 --> 00:11:02.809 into something good. Right. Though, fun fact, 00:11:03.210 --> 00:11:06.470 the TV show Mythbusters actually proved that 00:11:06.470 --> 00:11:09.789 you physically can polish a piece of feces by 00:11:09.789 --> 00:11:12.470 rolling it in dirt and using a Japanese polishing 00:11:12.470 --> 00:11:14.509 technique. I remember that. It was incredible. 00:11:14.870 --> 00:11:17.600 But linguistically... the point stands. And beyond 00:11:17.600 --> 00:11:20.120 just chaos and architecture, we also use the 00:11:20.120 --> 00:11:22.559 word to display pure dominance over someone else. 00:11:22.799 --> 00:11:25.240 Yeah, dominance is a major category for this 00:11:25.240 --> 00:11:27.659 vocabulary. The military phrase eat shit and 00:11:27.659 --> 00:11:30.620 die is a classic example. It sounds like a random 00:11:30.620 --> 00:11:33.860 curse, but it actually serves as a grim checklist. 00:11:34.139 --> 00:11:37.919 It names the three most basic biological functions 00:11:37.919 --> 00:11:42.120 humans are forced to do. Eat, excrete and expire. 00:11:42.429 --> 00:11:44.950 I never realized it was literally just the biological 00:11:44.950 --> 00:11:47.169 timeline of the human condition reduced to four 00:11:47.169 --> 00:11:50.549 words. That is dark. It is. You also have phrases 00:11:50.549 --> 00:11:53.330 like, you ain't shit, to express intimidation 00:11:53.330 --> 00:11:55.110 and clearly tell someone they are completely 00:11:55.110 --> 00:11:57.549 worthless. Or describing an exceptionally arrogant 00:11:57.549 --> 00:12:00.529 person by saying, he's shit don't stink. Oh, 00:12:00.529 --> 00:12:02.929 that's a great one. And the grammatical incorrectness 00:12:02.929 --> 00:12:05.730 of don't instead of doesn't is actually a feature, 00:12:06.029 --> 00:12:08.970 not a bug. It casually highlights the unwarranted 00:12:08.970 --> 00:12:10.789 self -importance of the person you're insulting. 00:12:11.289 --> 00:12:14.289 Absolutely. You also see pejoratives like shitkicker, 00:12:14.509 --> 00:12:16.529 which was historically used to describe a menial 00:12:16.529 --> 00:12:18.830 worker, and eventually evolved to describe a 00:12:18.830 --> 00:12:21.389 fan of country and western music. It is just 00:12:21.389 --> 00:12:24.149 fascinating that we have these strict unspoken 00:12:24.149 --> 00:12:26.970 rules in our own heads about how to use this 00:12:26.970 --> 00:12:29.309 word. Like we've talked about casual idioms, 00:12:29.389 --> 00:12:31.830 but there are actually strict, unconscious grammatical 00:12:31.830 --> 00:12:34.350 laws governing this profanity. There really are. 00:12:34.409 --> 00:12:36.269 Let's look at how the word operates in the past 00:12:36.269 --> 00:12:38.590 tense, for example. Depending on your regional 00:12:38.590 --> 00:12:42.450 dialect, the past tense can be shat, shit, or 00:12:42.450 --> 00:12:45.289 the much less common shitted. Shat is generally 00:12:45.289 --> 00:12:48.029 acceptable in British and global English, while 00:12:48.029 --> 00:12:50.610 shit functioning as its own past participle is 00:12:50.610 --> 00:12:52.669 often considered correct in American English. 00:12:53.029 --> 00:12:55.529 And my absolute favorite historical grammatical 00:12:55.529 --> 00:12:58.529 note is that Geoffrey Chaucer, the undisputed 00:12:58.529 --> 00:13:01.610 father of English literature, used shitten as 00:13:01.610 --> 00:13:04.460 a past participle in the Canterbury Tales. Oh 00:13:04.460 --> 00:13:07.759 wow. Yeah. So this word has serious foundational 00:13:07.759 --> 00:13:11.080 literary pedigree. It definitely does. The classical 00:13:11.080 --> 00:13:14.080 satirist Jonathan Swift even wrote a highly controversial 00:13:14.080 --> 00:13:17.580 poem in 1732 called The Lady's Dressing Room. 00:13:18.000 --> 00:13:20.340 Oh I've heard of this one. It ends with a lovesick 00:13:20.340 --> 00:13:22.580 man sneaking into his beloved's room only to 00:13:22.580 --> 00:13:24.559 have his romantic illusions utterly shattered 00:13:24.559 --> 00:13:27.100 by the smell of her chamber pot. And he just 00:13:27.100 --> 00:13:30.940 repeats the panicked lines. Oh Celia Celia Celia 00:13:30.940 --> 00:13:33.980 shits. Oh my god. Yeah, the shock value entirely 00:13:33.980 --> 00:13:36.480 relied on the strict taboo of attributing that 00:13:36.480 --> 00:13:39.440 word to a refined woman. Just shattering the 00:13:39.440 --> 00:13:42.559 polite illusion with biology. Exactly. But back 00:13:42.559 --> 00:13:45.000 to those unconscious rules we all follow. The 00:13:45.000 --> 00:13:47.620 word is used for emphasis all the time, just 00:13:47.620 --> 00:13:51.259 like the word fuck. But, crucially, it cannot 00:13:51.259 --> 00:13:55.100 be used as an infix. Right, so an infix is a 00:13:55.100 --> 00:13:57.139 word inserted right into the middle of another 00:13:57.139 --> 00:13:59.639 word. Like a prefix or suffix. But in the middle. 00:13:59.980 --> 00:14:02.940 Exactly. You can say something is in -fucking 00:14:02.940 --> 00:14:06.919 -credible. The profanity inserts perfectly before 00:14:06.919 --> 00:14:09.340 the stressed syllable. That works phonologically. 00:14:09.600 --> 00:14:12.220 Right. But if you try to say in -shit -incredible, 00:14:12.600 --> 00:14:15.519 it sounds completely wrong to a native speaker. 00:14:15.879 --> 00:14:17.919 It breaks an unconscious language rule. It's 00:14:17.919 --> 00:14:20.539 like a secret phonetic code we all know, but 00:14:20.539 --> 00:14:23.320 we're never explicitly taught. Even our most 00:14:23.320 --> 00:14:25.580 rule -breaking curse words have strict grammatical 00:14:25.580 --> 00:14:28.379 laws that we obey without thinking. We do. And 00:14:28.379 --> 00:14:30.120 when we don't want to break the polite laws of 00:14:30.120 --> 00:14:32.720 society, we build elaborate escape hatches, right? 00:14:33.100 --> 00:14:35.240 Like minced oaths and acronyms. We absolutely 00:14:35.240 --> 00:14:37.879 do. We replace it with shoot, shucks, or sugar. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.120 Or we create acronyms so we can say the letters 00:14:40.120 --> 00:14:42.860 instead of the word. Like S -O -L for when you 00:14:42.860 --> 00:14:45.809 were severely out of luck. In corporate joke 00:14:45.809 --> 00:14:48.629 emails or fake job applications, you might see 00:14:48.629 --> 00:14:51.350 a requirement for special high -intensity training. 00:14:51.470 --> 00:14:53.330 Or the classic phrase you hear in polite company 00:14:53.330 --> 00:14:55.950 when someone stubs their toe. Sugar honey iced 00:14:55.950 --> 00:14:59.669 tea. We go to enormous creative lengths to avoid 00:14:59.669 --> 00:15:02.370 vocalizing it. And that avoidance is deeply tied 00:15:02.370 --> 00:15:04.570 to demographics, actually. Oh, really? Yeah. 00:15:04.750 --> 00:15:06.909 Linguistic studies show that elderly speakers 00:15:06.909 --> 00:15:09.909 and people from higher socioeconomic strata tend 00:15:09.909 --> 00:15:12.649 to use the word much more privately than younger, 00:15:12.970 --> 00:15:15.070 blue -collar speakers. That makes sense. It's 00:15:15.070 --> 00:15:17.529 true power as an exclamation, like when someone 00:15:17.529 --> 00:15:20.950 gasps, holy shit, derives entirely from that 00:15:20.950 --> 00:15:24.509 taboo. It is the direct juxtaposition of the 00:15:24.509 --> 00:15:27.789 sacred and the profane collide. in a single phrase. 00:15:27.950 --> 00:15:30.289 Which brings us to the ultimate friction point. 00:15:30.850 --> 00:15:32.789 Because when you take this word out of our private 00:15:32.789 --> 00:15:35.029 vocabularies and put it onto the public airwaves, 00:15:35.570 --> 00:15:38.090 those internal rules clash violently with the 00:15:38.090 --> 00:15:40.570 external rules of society. You really do. How 00:15:40.570 --> 00:15:43.690 does a culture police a word this powerful? And 00:15:43.690 --> 00:15:45.669 what happens when someone decides to just break 00:15:45.669 --> 00:15:48.590 the broadcast taboo? Breaking the taboo has actually 00:15:48.590 --> 00:15:52.210 produced major milestones in media history. According 00:15:52.210 --> 00:15:55.149 to his own eulogy for his castmate, Graham Chapman, 00:15:55.610 --> 00:15:58.149 the first person to say the word on British television 00:15:58.149 --> 00:16:02.350 was John Cleese of Monty Python in the late 1960s. 00:16:02.409 --> 00:16:05.230 Wow, Monty Python breaking boundaries as usual. 00:16:05.529 --> 00:16:09.110 Right. Though it also quietly appeared in a 1966 00:16:09.110 --> 00:16:12.309 British film called Caldasac. And in the United 00:16:12.309 --> 00:16:15.389 States, George Carlin famously cemented it as 00:16:15.389 --> 00:16:17.700 one of the seven words you can never say on TV, 00:16:18.220 --> 00:16:21.559 in his legendary 1972 comedy routine. That's 00:16:21.559 --> 00:16:24.360 a huge piece of history. Yeah, that routine actually 00:16:24.360 --> 00:16:26.980 led to a Supreme Court case about the FCC's power 00:16:26.980 --> 00:16:30.019 to regulate indecency. But the broadcast dam 00:16:30.019 --> 00:16:32.740 eventually broke, right? It did. On October 14, 00:16:33.019 --> 00:16:35.620 1999, an episode of the medical drama Chicago 00:16:35.620 --> 00:16:38.620 Hope became the first show on U .S. network television, 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:40.720 excluding documentaries. Of course, to use the 00:16:40.720 --> 00:16:42.820 word in its uncensored form. Oh, I remember that 00:16:42.820 --> 00:16:44.679 being a huge deal. Yeah, the producers argued 00:16:44.679 --> 00:16:46.659 it was clinically necessary for the emotional 00:16:46.659 --> 00:16:48.820 reality of the scene. And because it's television, 00:16:49.419 --> 00:16:51.960 that dramatic milestone was immediately parodied. 00:16:52.100 --> 00:16:54.990 Of course it was. The cable show South Park aired 00:16:54.990 --> 00:16:57.909 an episode called It Hits the Fan, specifically 00:16:57.909 --> 00:17:00.629 to mock the media hype surrounding Chicago Hope. 00:17:00.909 --> 00:17:04.190 Oh my gosh, yes. They used the word exactly 200 00:17:04.190 --> 00:17:07.109 times in a single 22 -minute episode. That is 00:17:07.109 --> 00:17:09.470 dedication to a bit. They even put a digital 00:17:09.470 --> 00:17:11.230 counter in the corner of the screen to track 00:17:11.230 --> 00:17:15.309 it for the viewer. 162 times spoken, 38 times 00:17:15.309 --> 00:17:17.819 written. Since they were on cable, they operated 00:17:17.819 --> 00:17:21.059 outside the FCC's strict broadcast regulations. 00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:23.440 Right. Cable is different. Terrestrial radio, 00:17:23.779 --> 00:17:25.559 however, is a very different story. Oh, yeah. 00:17:25.680 --> 00:17:27.799 Radio is strict. Radio stations in the U .S. 00:17:27.940 --> 00:17:30.500 must abide by FCC guidelines on obscenity because 00:17:30.500 --> 00:17:33.539 they use public airwaves, yet the word frequently 00:17:33.539 --> 00:17:36.339 sneaks through the censors. How so? Well, Pink 00:17:36.339 --> 00:17:38.859 Floyd's hit Money features the line bullshit 00:17:38.859 --> 00:17:42.000 and is frequently broadcast unedited. Alice in 00:17:42.000 --> 00:17:44.380 Chains' Man in the Box has played unedited on 00:17:44.380 --> 00:17:47.279 rock stations for decades. Wow, really? Yeah. 00:17:47.559 --> 00:17:49.559 And Green Day performed live on Saturday Night 00:17:49.559 --> 00:17:52.180 Live in 1994, and the singer dropped the word 00:17:52.180 --> 00:17:54.519 right into the mic. It completely bypassed the 00:17:54.519 --> 00:17:57.420 take delay. But a lot of times, the artists are 00:17:57.420 --> 00:17:59.299 forced to compromise. You get the radio edits, 00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:02.380 like Fergie's massive pop song, London Bridge, 00:18:02.720 --> 00:18:05.079 had to entirely change its repeating background 00:18:05.079 --> 00:18:08.779 lyric from, oh shit, to the incredibly sanitized, 00:18:09.000 --> 00:18:12.019 oh snap. just to get airplay. Right. Euphemisms 00:18:12.019 --> 00:18:14.339 are demanded in polite society and broadcast 00:18:14.339 --> 00:18:17.259 media, but behind closed doors, people in power 00:18:17.259 --> 00:18:19.359 don't have time for euphemisms. Oh, definitely 00:18:19.359 --> 00:18:22.539 not. During the Watergate scandal, President 00:18:22.539 --> 00:18:25.000 Richard Nixon was tape recorded in the Oval Office 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:27.420 telling his aides, I don't give a shit about 00:18:27.420 --> 00:18:29.319 the lira. Which, I mean, he was dealing with 00:18:29.319 --> 00:18:31.240 a massive political crisis that was threatening 00:18:31.240 --> 00:18:34.380 his presidency. He didn't care about the fluctuating 00:18:34.380 --> 00:18:36.960 Italian monetary system. Exactly. He deployed 00:18:36.960 --> 00:18:39.380 the word to convey absolute indifference and 00:18:39.380 --> 00:18:42.180 cut through the noise, which I think brings us 00:18:42.180 --> 00:18:44.740 to perhaps the most important consequential use 00:18:44.740 --> 00:18:48.490 of the word today. saving human lives. Yes, absolutely. 00:18:48.930 --> 00:18:50.809 In global public health, there is a prominent 00:18:50.809 --> 00:18:53.549 movement called community led total sanitation 00:18:53.549 --> 00:18:56.349 or CLTS. It operates in developing countries 00:18:56.349 --> 00:18:59.349 to stop the practice of open defecation, which 00:18:59.349 --> 00:19:02.309 causes massive deadly disease outbreaks like 00:19:02.309 --> 00:19:05.759 cholera. So what does this all mean? How can 00:19:05.759 --> 00:19:08.500 a word be deemed too dangerous for a Fergie pop 00:19:08.500 --> 00:19:11.880 song on the radio, but be considered an essential 00:19:11.880 --> 00:19:15.019 life -saving tool in global sanitation campaigns? 00:19:15.400 --> 00:19:17.619 This raises an important question about the fundamental 00:19:17.619 --> 00:19:21.039 function of language. Euphemisms soften reality. 00:19:21.099 --> 00:19:23.900 Right. If health workers go into a village facing 00:19:23.900 --> 00:19:26.779 a cholera outbreak and hand out pamphlets about 00:19:26.779 --> 00:19:30.519 feces or excreta, it sounds clinical. It sounds 00:19:30.519 --> 00:19:33.019 distant. It doesn't create urgency in the local 00:19:33.019 --> 00:19:35.619 population. It's just academic noise. It doesn't 00:19:35.619 --> 00:19:38.799 trigger the human disgust reflex needed to actually 00:19:38.799 --> 00:19:41.299 change behavior. Exactly the opposite of what's 00:19:41.299 --> 00:19:43.539 needed. But when those health workers deliberately 00:19:43.539 --> 00:19:46.500 use the crude local word, the exact equivalent 00:19:46.500 --> 00:19:48.880 of our four letter word, it creates immediate 00:19:48.880 --> 00:19:51.339 shock value. I see. It bypasses polite society 00:19:51.339 --> 00:19:53.740 and hits the visceral emotional core we talked 00:19:53.740 --> 00:19:55.859 about earlier with the manure spreader. When 00:19:55.859 --> 00:19:59.259 you need urgent, decisive action. Whether you 00:19:59.259 --> 00:20:01.759 are Richard Nixon trying to manage Watergate 00:20:01.759 --> 00:20:04.359 or a public health worker trying to prevent a 00:20:04.359 --> 00:20:07.160 deadly epidemic, you don't use polite terms. 00:20:07.480 --> 00:20:09.980 You really don't. You bypass the botanical garden 00:20:09.980 --> 00:20:12.640 of language entirely and you use the word that 00:20:12.640 --> 00:20:15.430 guarantees an impact. That is just incredible. 00:20:15.569 --> 00:20:17.630 We have traveled from the ancient proto -Indo 00:20:17.630 --> 00:20:19.869 -European tribes roaming the earth to Geoffrey 00:20:19.869 --> 00:20:22.150 Chaucer writing the Canterbury Tales, through 00:20:22.150 --> 00:20:25.450 the highly architectural idioms of brick outhouses, 00:20:25.950 --> 00:20:28.190 straight to South Park counters, and life -saving 00:20:28.190 --> 00:20:30.849 sanitation campaigns. It really is the ultimate 00:20:30.849 --> 00:20:33.109 linguistic tool. It is a word that continuously 00:20:33.109 --> 00:20:35.910 adapts to whatever humanity needs it to be, a 00:20:35.910 --> 00:20:39.369 noun, a verb, an exclamation of joy, a cry of 00:20:39.369 --> 00:20:41.789 despair, or a literal lifesaver. It really covers 00:20:41.789 --> 00:20:44.690 all the bases. with a final thought for you to 00:20:44.690 --> 00:20:47.210 mull over. Consider the enormous lengths that 00:20:47.210 --> 00:20:49.269 polite society goes to in order to avoid this 00:20:49.269 --> 00:20:51.829 word. We create elaborate acronyms like sugar 00:20:51.829 --> 00:20:54.769 honey iced tea. We invent radio edits to protect 00:20:54.769 --> 00:20:57.630 the airways. We write massive volumes of SCC 00:20:57.630 --> 00:20:59.849 guidelines. So much effort. Does censoring the 00:20:59.849 --> 00:21:03.150 word actually strip it of its power? Or does 00:21:03.150 --> 00:21:06.109 treating it like a forbidden taboo ensure that 00:21:06.109 --> 00:21:08.569 it will remain the ultimate unbreakable linguistic 00:21:08.569 --> 00:21:11.009 tool for generations to come? That's a great 00:21:11.009 --> 00:21:13.359 question to think about. That wraps up our journey 00:21:13.359 --> 00:21:15.059 through the wildest corner of the dictionary. 00:21:15.720 --> 00:21:17.680 Thank you for joining us on this custom -tailored 00:21:17.680 --> 00:21:20.420 deep dive, and as always, keep bringing your 00:21:20.420 --> 00:21:22.740 curiosity to the table. Until next time.