Talk:bullshit
According to On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press, Princeton, N.J. (2005), bullshit is discourse that is characterized by the speaker's lack of concern for its truth or falsity. Bullshit may be either true or false -- the bullshitter doesn't care. The bullshitter intends to deceive about his sincerity, but may be as willing to carry off this deception with a true statement as with a false one. The person who intends to deceive with false information is a liar, not a bullshitter.
Seems to me you can bullshit with all truths, as in "using relatively unimportant facts in order to mis-direct or obscure much more important facts". "Who ate the last piece of cake?" Says the one who did: "I saw John eating a piece of cake." True, but bullshit. As the senior sales person instructed the junior: "Don't lie; bullshit".
- I think that this is a noteworthy meaning, so I added this meaning. Someone should add a quote. Hulten (talk) 08:54, 7 June 2018 (UTC)
RFD discussion: May 2013–April 2014
The following information passed a request for deletion.
This discussion is no longer live and is left here as an archive. Please do not modify this conversation, but feel free to discuss its conclusions.
rfd-sense: An expression of disbelief or doubt at what one has just heard. Isn't this just the noun used on its own? No interjection at horseshit or bullcrap for example. Mglovesfun (talk) 13:38, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
- Yep. One could just as easily add the same to nonsense, poppycock, horsefeathers, hogwash, bull, horse pucky and, of course, all the usual vulgarisms. Delete Chuck Entz (talk) 14:52, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
- Delete. This kind of usage could be considered an ellipsis for "That/this is/was bullshit". Unless an ostensible interjection that is more commonly also a noun cannot be so defined with at least one of the noun's definitions, it seems to me that it does not merit inclusion, except in Wikiphrasebook. DCDuring TALK 16:15, 30 May 2013 (UTC)
- Keep as a phrasebook entry at least. This word, when used as an interjection, has nontrivial translations into foreign languages, which I think are worth keeping. Keφr 11:28, 5 June 2013 (UTC)
- We have intjs at some such entries (rubbish) but not others (tommyrot). I incline towards deletion. Equinox ◑ 18:43, 5 March 2014 (UTC)
- Keep. I am not sure. What I find troubling is that there is no attempt at a systematic treatment of the question. Like, would many interjection sections of terms from Wikisaurus:dammit be deleted, including shit, fuck, hell, on similar grounds? If not, what is the difference? For "hell", I would argue that a non-native speaker cannot know that the noun "hell" is used to the effect of "damn"; you cannot use Czech cs:peklo in that way; similarly for "fuck": this highly generic expletive is almost never rendered into Czech as cs:mrdat, certainly not in that generic way; "shit" (damn) would not be rendered as cs:"hovno" but rather as cs:kurva or cs:sakra. For a past case that seems directly equivalent to "bullshit", see Talk:nonsense. As for what other dictionaries do: AHD: bullshit has an "interjection" section; Merriam-Webster: bullshit does not have an interjection section, while Merriam-Webster: hell has "used as an interjection" in its noun section; Collins:bullshit has no interjection section while Collins:hell has an exclamation section. dictionary.cambridge.org:bullshit has the entry as "exclamation, noun". --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:57, 9 March 2014 (UTC)
- Yes, but the argument for deletion is that the exclamation "bullshit!" can be understood as " bullshit!" — no such thing applies to hell or fuck, and it is quite a stretch to apply it to shit. Keφr 08:01, 27 March 2014 (UTC)