shit

There are perhaps a half dozen words in the English language which are the sum total of many vocabularies. Shit is one of them. The meaning does not come in the words' four letters but in it's context and vocalization. It can be a threat, denunciation, exclamation, exhilaration etc. Few words have such a variety of meaning. It ranks right up there with fuck. Perhaps we should drop literature from our schools and just concentrate on these four-letter words.