This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »
curiosi · 61-69, F
the earliest example of it in print is in Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead, 1948:
These riffraff in the platoon had an expression, "to keep a tight ass-hole." What did they know of it? It's the only way they judge anybody, he told himself. "When the shit hits the fan that's when you keep a . . ."
Mailer brought the phrase to the public's attention but he clearly didn't coin it himself. It was well enough known to the American military for a spoof of it to have been used in a song title in 1946. That's the year that John La Cerda published a memoire of the US war in the Pacific - The conqueror comes to tea: Japan under MacArthur, in which he referred to the song - The Shinto Hit the Fan.
The 1967 edition of Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English includes this:
"Wait till the major hears that! Then the shit'll hit the fan!"
Partridge lists the phrase as Canadian, circa 1930.
These riffraff in the platoon had an expression, "to keep a tight ass-hole." What did they know of it? It's the only way they judge anybody, he told himself. "When the shit hits the fan that's when you keep a . . ."
Mailer brought the phrase to the public's attention but he clearly didn't coin it himself. It was well enough known to the American military for a spoof of it to have been used in a song title in 1946. That's the year that John La Cerda published a memoire of the US war in the Pacific - The conqueror comes to tea: Japan under MacArthur, in which he referred to the song - The Shinto Hit the Fan.
The 1967 edition of Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English includes this:
"Wait till the major hears that! Then the shit'll hit the fan!"
Partridge lists the phrase as Canadian, circa 1930.