Americans Can’t Believe “Shithouse” Is A Real Word Australians Say
As usual, this is Trump's fault.
You know how the President of the United States had a real racist moment and described a bunch of countries as “shitholes” the other day? Well, in addition to widespread and well-deserved backlash against Trump, the incident has spawned some, ah, interesting linguistic discourse.
This afternoon a Washington Post reporter tweeted that a White House official told him there is “debate internally over whether Trump said ‘shithole’ or ‘shithouse'”. This seems fairly unimportant: both mean pretty much the same thing, and are just as ghastly.
That is…if you live in Australia.
White House official told me tonight there is debate internally on whether Trump said "shithole" or "shithouse." Perdue and Cotton seem to have heard latter, this person said, and are using to deny.
— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) January 15, 2018
It turns out Americans are really, really unfamiliar with the world “shithouse”. In fact, they’re currently losing their minds on social media over it, wondering into the void about whether or not it’s a word, what it might mean, and whether using it modifies Trump’s meaning.
Please enjoy this confusion:
Shithouse? What bs. Not a word or phrase used in that context. https://t.co/FSMxc6yWNd
— 2110watch (@2110watch2110) January 15, 2018
"Shithouse" just mostly makes Trump sound like he can't fucking speak English. But also, calling someplace an outhouse isn't substantively much better than calling it a hole where you take a dump. https://t.co/KlNyXQ97De
— Liz Mair (@LizMair) January 15, 2018
Is "shithouse" an actual vulgarity? https://t.co/B8KVMroNBj
— Emily Feng (@EmilyZFeng) January 15, 2018
the latter makes zero sense & is still terrible.
— Sean O'Leary (@stholeary) January 15, 2018
What the fuck is a shithouse anyway? You tell Cotton in this country we speak English https://t.co/Ppjr5QsMej
— Ed K (@edkrayewski) January 15, 2018
“Shithouse” isn’t a thing people say.
— Ben Dreyfuss (@bendreyfuss) January 15, 2018
Those last few are pretty righteous — and pretty wrong. As anyone who’s spent more than five minutes in Australia can attest, shithouse is indeed a word that people use and say (the second definition on Urban Dictionary is pretty accurate). And if you’re wondering what Aussie Twitter’s up to right now, well, exactly what you’d expect:
come visit Australia mate, you'll hear it three times before you get out of the airport
— Josh Butler (@JoshButler) January 15, 2018
come to australia sweetie
— Alex Bruce-Smith (@alexbrucesmith) January 15, 2018
Australia disagrees! It’s an absolutely commonplace word, ie. that was a shithouse tweet.
— MsStableGeniusPraxis (@MsPraxis) January 15, 2018
Anyway, in conclusion shithouse is a word but it also doesn’t fucking matter: Trump’s still a racist asshole, and he still said a real bad thing. Australia out.
Stop dancing on the head of pin. Shithole. Shithouse. Shitshow. It doesn’t matter the specific word used. White Hous is not denying that Trump denigrated Africa, Haiti & El Salvador. Focus on the racism.
— Wendy Thurm (@wendythurm) January 15, 2018