SPIKE//

I really wanted these words to be somehow connected way-back etymologically.  I was hoping they shared a common root, meaning something like “utter garbage” and that they had been twisted around by the Great Vowel Shift and Grimm’s Law-type sound changes.

But that’s not the case at all.  And if I could ever remember what changes Grimm’s law and the Great Vowel Shift actually wrought, I could probably have figured it out.  Oh well, a girl can always hope.  And when hope runs out, the girl checks the OED.

Shit (in the sense of “cow excrement”) is an old word from either Middle Low German or Old Norse.  There’s tokens of shit dated back as far as the year 1000 (also- that last sentence is ridiculous and I refuse to change it).  I was surprised, however, to find shitty not attested until the mid 1970s.   Shoddy meaning “cheap and dilapidated” goes back to the mid 19th century and originally referred to a crappy variety of wool, but the etymology is uncertain.  The origin of shabby comes from Late German schabbig, meaning  ”scabby”.  Imagine my chagrin at discovering that scabby isn’t even related to scabies.  Scabies is the older word (c. 1400), probably coming from the Old English word meaning “to shave or scrape”.