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-   -   Translating Obscenity (https://www.ablemuse.com/erato/showthread.php?t=29045)

Roger Slater 01-12-2018 03:56 PM

I live in Suffolk County, Julie, and the homes do tend to have cesspools, but I have never heard anyone call them shitholes. I associate "shithole" with horrible dwellings, not cesspools.

Aaron Novick 01-12-2018 04:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aaron Poochigian (Post 409144)
As a translator of, often obscene, poetry, I find this article fascinating: https://www.yahoo.com/news/translati...?.tsrc=fauxdal

They're missing the best one: Croatia

Julie Steiner 01-12-2018 05:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Slater (Post 409164)
I live in Suffolk County, Julie, and the homes do tend to have cesspools, but I have never heard anyone call them shitholes. I associate "shithole" with horrible dwellings, not cesspools.

Yeah, I haven't found any solid...oh, unfortunate word choice in this context...evidence to support my dad's usage for the cesspool itself, rather than for the outhouse above it (or for other buildings being disparagingly compared to such an unsavory structure). So I stand corrected. Thanks, Rogerbob.

Further reading:
Stack Exchange English Language & Usage
The Baltimore Sun's discussion of a governor's use of the term in 1991

John Isbell 01-12-2018 05:11 PM

Thank you, Aaron - that's the exact problem I was facing. I do find your link illuminating as well.

Cheers,
John

Ann Drysdale 01-13-2018 03:35 AM

Dritthull. Norwegian. Two birds with one stone?

John Isbell 01-13-2018 03:59 AM

Scheissloch. Trou a merde. The obvious French choice is a hole to put shit in, it's pretty literal to my ear. It sounds like Jarry or Rabelais. German is more readily metaphorical IMO. Or you could go with beschissen.

Cheers,
John

RCL 01-13-2018 01:01 PM

Double Duty
 
What I love is that Trump is both shit and hole (ass, that is)

Julie Steiner 01-15-2018 03:18 PM

So...about all those "that wasn't the language used" and "I don't recall him saying that word" and "mischaracterization" objections?

It seems that Trump said "shithouse" rather than "shithole."

THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/did-tru...-or-shithouse/

Allen Tice 01-15-2018 03:36 PM

Now you'll be thinking that this is a joke, and it isn't. Behind the rather nice two-story rural frame house where my father was born and raised, stood (and stand) two well-built brick outstructures, side by side, that were used before that area's increased water supply allowed conversion to indoor plumbing. Let me emphasize how neat and tidy and square they were. When I visited as a boy, I admired their symmetry, and masonry, and the way the shingled roofs and white-painted molding underneath them merged with the brickwork. I eventually asked what they were used for. An aunt told what they had been, and how their understructure had been thoroughly decommissioned, filled-in, and refurbished to serve as storage sheds for yard tools. Waste not, want not.

RCL 01-15-2018 04:32 PM

When I was a kid, we lived on a semi-rural road where every other house had an "outhouse" waiting to be tumbled over on Halloween. Nice folks called them outhouses, but the vernacular was "shithouses."


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