Critical Focus | Feces, from Start to Finish
THE MICROSCOPE
2018, Volume 66:4, pp. 169–180
DOI
https://doi.org/10.59082/EEDM2541
AUTHOR
Brian J. Ford
EXCERPT
You must know the one about the dung beetle — walks into a bar and asks: “Is this stool taken?” It’s one of the few quotable jokes about excreta. Most are merely impolite (like, “people who complain about constipation are full of crap”). I daresay many of you thought that the title of this column was actually the editor’s comments on this article, scrawled dismissively on the draft and mistakenly set in type. But no — this time I really am looking at excreta. What I find so intriguing is that it has so many synonyms. Most physical human functions have a couple of alternatives (like breathing and respiring, or sweat and perspiration), but for excreta there is the longest list of all: dung, excrement, excretion, crap, poop (and poo), defecation, fecal matter, feces and feculence, deuce, motions, dirt, ordure, shit (and shite), manure, turd, scag (and scat), droppings, dags, sewage, guano, number two, waste, discharge, stool ... I have listed here far more than are included on collinsdictionary.com or even thesaurus.com, yet the list could certainly be further extended.