Friday, April 02, 2010

What could be more appropriate for Other "Crap": Bullshit, Batshit, Chickenshit: A Taxonomy of Rhetorical Shit

To add to the lexicon: "chickenshit" can mean cowardly, as mentioned in the article, but also has two other meanings:

(1) It is an adjective defining totally insignificant and irrelevant things which are or ought to be ignored, as in "chickenshit rules." If a person were to take advantage of chickenshit things, the person or his actions would also be called chickenshit, e.g. "awarding himself the point on a technicality was a chickenshit move." When it has this meaning and is applied to a person, it is sometimes used as a noun, and can apply either to the person or his actions: e.g. "awarding himself the point on a technicality was total chickenshit," or "awarding himself the point on a technicality made him a total chickenshit."

(2) It is also a noun meaning a martinet, or some other kind of a petty, persnickety person. In this meaning, as in the other one above, it can also alternatively refer to the actions of such a person. When appled to a person it usually requires an article: "that college-boy second looey is a total chickenshit." When applied to his actions the article is omitted, as in "we'll have to eat more chickenshit from our college-boy second looey."

Note that parts of speech and even shades of meaning may easily be combined: "I'm sick of that chickenshit and his chickenshit rules. How much chickenshit do we have to put up with?"

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