Euphemisms, or, usage is weird

[redbird]

A friend of mine (who can identify zirself, or not, as zie chooses) recently made a post in which zie used "shit" as a metasyntactic variable, roughly meaning "stuff like that"--and then, in the next sentence, used "poo" to refer to animal feces.

Comments

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

We noticed that usage when there was a baby in the house. "Somebody clean up this shit in the hallway!" was speaking emphatically about clutter. "Somebody clean up this poop in the hallway!" was not exaggerating at all. The language was exactly as strong as it needed to be.

[angelsk.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's an English turn of phgrase, but I use shit to mean clutter/stuff - ie. clean up your shit before you go to work. IT's not such a nice word tho :(