shit

   This much used word - still considered to be taboo in polite society - indicates general feelings of contempt when applied to a person as a vocative. It is especially frequent in American English.

   In Boulevard Nights, by Dewey Gram, ‘you shit’ is spoken by a young man to his brother, while ‘you shits’ in Portnoy’s Complaint, by Philip Roth, is addressed to two friends of the speaker with whom he is temporarily displeased.

   Elizabeth Jane Howard, in Getting it Right, has a male character address another as ‘you fucking little fly-blown piece of shit’, giving vent to very real anger. Redback, by Howard Jacobson, has the following:

   ‘You stay where you are,’ said Venie. ‘You little shit’ Only because she had just come back from New Zealand and had picked up the accent, she pronounced it ‘shut.’ Every man should know what it is like, just once in his life, to be called ‘a little shut.’

   Rabbit is Rich, by John Updike, has another example of ‘you shit’ used by a woman to a man, one who has not realized that she has been in love with him for a long time. In The Choirboys, by Joseph Wambaugh, a policewoman in Los Angeles calls a male colleague ‘you dumb shit’ because he has just challenged a prisoner to a fight and been knocked to the floor for doing so.