Chnoute or Chnoutte

This is a crude word that means ‘shit.’

It is much more offensive that the commoner Québec word for shit, ‘marde’ (standard French ‘merde.’) Yet some Québec language authorities state that chnoute is the euphemism, a milder replacement for the more vulgar ‘marde.’

Example of Quebec usage:

Cet manifeste-là de la souveraineté, c’est juste de la chnoute.

‘That separatist declaration is nothing but a pile of shit.’

 

Lively Quebec Uses of Marde

Mange de la marde ‘eat shit’

Maudite marde! ‘oh shit!’ but the semantic force in Québec French is milder than the literal English translation, more like ‘gosh, what a bummer!’ or ‘that’s too bad.’

Rare comme de la marde de pape ‘rare as pope’s shit’

 C’est le bout (la boutte) de la marde! ‘That’s the worst shit ever. Total crap! Now I’ve seen everything.’

Tu es donc bien mardeux! ‘you are one lucky son-of-a-bitch!’ Literally this is one of those popular phrases that says the exact opposite of what it means, ‘you are really well covered with shit.’

Chu dans marde jusqu’au cou ‘I’m in deep shit.’ ‘I’m in it up to my ears.’ The French literally says ‘in shit up to my neck.’

 

Merde in the Theaters of France

In the English theater world, one may wish a performer good luck before a performance by saying “Break a leg.” In France, as the actor gets ready to go on stage, one says, “Merde.” A few uppity thespians whose native tongue is English also use merde before the show, to display their immense francophilic learning.

  

Word Lore of Merde

French merde, like Italian merda ‘shit’ and Spanish merdoso ‘filthy’ derive from the popular street Latin merda ‘shit.’ The classical Latin was faex, faecis from which English borrows its adjective, fecal. Merda does appear in classical Latin texts and usually refers to animal dung or the ordure of creatures not human.

Merd in English

Merdivorous

A rare adjective in English is merdivorous, literally ‘eating shit.’ Think of herbivore and carnivore. The adjective usually describes insects but may be applied to certain politicians as well.

 

Dogmerds?

The British novelist Anthony Burgess, author of A Clockwork Orange (1962), on which Stanley Kubrick based his 1972 film, suggested that the English language was in urgent need of a single word for dog poop, a noun to signify the nasty individual turd itself, so frequent on public sidewalks. Burgess made up and offered the compound dogmerd. Nasty but not as disgusting as ‘dog turd.’ Dogmerd did not catch on.

The word merd had been used before in English as a synonym for turd. The poet T. S. Eliot in his second book of poetry, Ara Vos Prec, published in 1919 wrote this line: “The goat coughs at night in the field overhead; Rocks, moss, stonecrop, iron, merds.”

That’s our scatology (Greek, literally ‘treatise on dung’ ) for today. Step carefully on your way home, class.