Ship High In Transit

[Kilroy]

In the 16th and 17th centuries, before commercial fertilizer was invented, large shipments of manure were transported by ship. It was shipped in dry bundles because in dry form it weighed a lot less than when wet. But once water hit it at sea, it not only became heavier, but the process of fermentation began, a by-product of which is methane gas. It didn't take long for methane to build up below decks and the first time someone came below at night with a lantern, BOOOOM!
Several ships were destroyed in this manner before somebody figured out what was happening. Once they determined the role that manure played in the explosions, everybody began stamping the bundles with the term "Ship High In Transit," so that the sailors would know to stow it high enough off the lower decks so that any water that came into the hold would not touch this volatile cargo and start the production of methane.
Thus evolved the term "S.H.I.T," which has come down through the centuries and is in use to this very day. You probably did not know the true history of this word. Neither did I. I always thought it was a golf term.

[rancherJ]

this is a very popular urban legend
check on google under ship
high in transit. i know you would never try to pull a fast one on us but er..
"stuff" happens
www.urbanlegends.about.com/library/blhoax.htm

[Kilroy]

Origin of the S-Word
http://urbanlegends.about.com/librar...igh+in+transit

Comments: Well, clever as that all is, etymologists everywhere must be holding their noses right about now. According to my dictionary, the word "" is much older than the 1800s, appearing in its earliest form — before 1,000 A.D. — as the Old English verb scitan. That's confirmed by lexicographer Hugh Rawson in his bawdily informative book, "Wicked Words" (New York: Crown, 1989), where it is further noted that the expletive is a distant relative of words like science, schedule and shield. They all derive from the Indo-European root skei-, meaning "to cut" or "to split." For most of its history "" was spelled "e" (and sometimes still is, euphemistically), but the modern spelling of the word can be found in texts dating as far back as the mid-1700s. It most certainly did not originate as an acronym.

Apropos that false premise, Rawson observes that "" has long been the subject of naughty wordplay, quite often based on made-up acronyms. For example:

In the Army, officers who did not go to West Point have been known to disparage the military academy as the South Hudson Institute of Technology.... And if an angelic six-year-old asks, "Would you like to have some Sugar Honey Iced Tea?", the safest course is to pretend that you have suddenly gone stone deaf.
And, finally, the "S.H.I.T." tale is reminiscent of another popular specimen of folk etymology claiming that the F-word (another good, old-fashioned, all-purpose, four-letter expletive) originated as an acronym of "Fornication Under Consent of the King," or, in another variant, "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge." Needless to say, it's all C.R.A.P.