shitstorm

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See also: Shitstorm

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

shit +‎ storm

Pronunciation[edit]

  • (file)

Noun[edit]

shitstorm (plural shitstorms)

  1. (slang, derogatory, vulgar) A chaotic and unpleasant or violent situation.
    • 1948, Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead:
      The hell with Brown [] He's been missing all the shit storms. It's his turn.
    • 1963, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 110, in Cat's Cradle:
      'Sometimes the pool-pah,' Bokonon tells us, 'exceeds the power of humans to comment.' Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as 'shit storm' and at another point as 'wrath of God'.
    • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Part I:
      “...seem’s he’s been tumbling ass over teakettle—though there’s no way to tell in this murky shitstorm, no visual references...”
    • 1999, Joseph Finder, High Crimes:
      "You and your cowboys just stirred up a shitstorm, agent."
    • 2006, David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets:
      In Baltimore, the general rule is that if something looks like a shitstorm, smells like a shitstorm and tastes like a shitstorm, it goes to homicide.
  2. (idiomatic, vulgar) Considerable backlash from the public.
    • 2010, Mungo MacCallum, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 32:
      When Abbott stated openly that his plan involved a new tax of 1.7% on large companies with big profit margins - those, in fact, most able to pay - he provoked a near universal shitstorm.

Descendants[edit]

  • German: Shitstorm
  • Polish: gównoburza (calque)

Translations[edit]