Shit happens

For other uses, see Shit happens (disambiguation).

Shit happens is a common vulgar slang phrase, used as a simple existential observation that life is full of unpredictable events, either "Así es la vida" or "C'est la vie". The phrase is an acknowledgment that bad things happen to people seemingly for no particular reason.[1][2] The phrase was first observed in 1964, but wasn't used in a print publication until 1983. Alternately said, albeit less vulgarly, as "stuff happens".[3]

History

The fact that people have been remarking that shit happens has been attested from 1964, when Carl Werthman quoted an example in his UCB MA thesis; the relevant excerpt was published in The American City (edited by Anselm L. Strauss) in 1968.[4]

In a review of Fred Shapiro's 2006 work The Yale Book of Quotations, The New Yorker critic Louis Menand stated that it is "extremely interesting" that the phrase "Shit happens" was introduced to print by Connie Eble, in a publication identified as UNC–CH Slang in 1983.[5]

In the 1994 movie Forrest Gump, Forrest runs into dog droppings and a man in the bumper sticker business brings it up. Forrest says "It happens," to which the man asks "What, shit?" and Forrest answers "Sometimes."

See also

References

Look up shit happens in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
  1. ↑ "Shit happens". Psychology Today. New York. May 1995. Retrieved 2007-11-25.
  2. ↑ "Vic & Sade (pg 02) 1940–1941". Sound Recording. archive.org. Retrieved 12 September 2011.
  3. ↑ http://abcnews.go.com/US/jeb-bush-stuff-response-gun-violence/story?id=34209380
  4. ↑ The datum: "That shit happens all the time." In "The Police as Perceived by Negro Boys", ed. Carl Werthman; in The American City: A Source Book of Urban Imagery, edited by Anselm L. Strauss (Chicago: Aldine, 1968), p. 285. Here in Google Books. A footnote says that Werthman's short contribution to the book is "Excerpted from 'Gang members and the police', unpublished M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1964."
  5. ↑ Menand, Louis (2007). "Notable Quotables (Book review of "Yale Book of Quotations", ed. Fred Shapiro)". The New Yorker (19 February 2007).
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