Talk:piss

Translations

Let us please stick to the language register at hand, that is, not include translations of "urine" (for noun), "urinate" (for verb), nor of "pee". We need not add all existing synonyms in the foreign tongue, what is needed here are the most equivalent terms, and nothing else. --Jerome Potts 17:51, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Adverb?

I just read a YouTube comment saying "This is piss funny". The comment was posted by an Australian. So can piss be an adverb, at least in Australian English? Steinbach (talk) 08:25, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

"Adverb" is known as one of the parts of speech, but it does a piss-poor job of classifying all the words that are said to belong to it. "Noun" is mostly unambiguous; "adjective" is pretty clear too; but "adverb" means far too many different and incompatible things.

"Piss-poor" (in the way I used it above) means "about as worthless as piss". I'm assuming that "piss funny" from your Australian example is quite different, perhaps meaning "so funny you might piss yourself from laughing".

In my opinion, the word "piss" as used in your example does qualify as some kind of adverb - whatever "adverb" is supposed to mean. :) TooManyFingers (talk) 20:02, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm, looking into this, I notice it (the phrase "piss funny") is indeed attested:

• 2007, James Roy, Town, Univ. of Queensland Press (→ISBN), page 176:

  Waldo's like, No way, he's still trying to work out how to get her bra undone, & we think this is piss-funny, & then we start getting a bit gross, & we're saying all sorts of stuff about what they're doing now, […]

• 2007, C. N. Barton, The Cambridge Diaries: A Tale of Friendship, Love and Economics, Janus Publishing Company Lim (→ISBN), page 417:

  “You are piss funny, Caolan O'Donnell, you really are.” “Tell me something I don't know.” “Right, unless nob-head over there has any objections, I'll tell you my best moment.” “I wouldn't dream of interrupting you, Joshua.”

• 2016, Rae Earl, My Mad Fat Diary: A Memoir, St. Martin's Griffin (→ISBN), page 267:

  Just watched Black Adder Goes Forth. Can I just say Ben Elton is my bloody hero for ever. If it wasn't for him I would still think voting Tory was OK. And he is piss funny ...

• 2019, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Julie Hesmondhalgh: A Working Diary, Bloomsbury Publishing (→ISBN):

  Noreen is completely ace: a champion of young artists, a fabulous actor (she was the first Shirley Valentine), an accomplished director and a friend to everyone. She is piss-funny too, and […]

I may ask in the WT:Tea Room what part of speech this should be viewed as. - -sche (discuss) 22:00, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

It's used with other words besides "funny", too:

• 1989, Kate Pullinger, When the monster dies, Jonathan Cape:

  Irene went down to her studio and brought the painting upstairs. She leaned it against a wall and then she and Mary contemplated it from across the room. 'It really is piss-ugly,' said Mary with a note of grudging affection in her voice.

- -sche (discuss) 22:05, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

Tea Room discussion: Wiktionary:Tea_room/2020/January#someone_is_piss_funny,_ugly,_etc. I've now added this as a sense of the noun. Compare "piss-poor" to "dirt-poor", as noted in the Tea Room. - -sche (discuss) 04:59, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Interjection

An IP added long ago a use of this word as an interjection, which I see as a playful euphemism when the listener expects the far more common shit or fuck. I've seen it in different contexts too ... e.g.

Piss! A wasp just got me!

Well, piss, looks like I was wrong!, or just plain

PISSSSS! .... a cry of frustration. Perhaps the most versatile usage because it ends in a sound that can be extended, unlike shit, fuck, and their respective euphemisms.

I could probably pull together three citations of this if that's all I need ... but they'd be webcomics, Twitter posts, etc .... I dont know if I'd be able to find it used in traditional print media. —Soap— 19:54, 17 June 2020 (UTC)

N too hard to search for, Im giving up on this. Even the YouTube videos I remember are difficult to find. —Soap— 13:35, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

I dont know why I didnt think of this before but ... perhaps interjection use of "piss" is just a variant of the interjection use of "pisser" and may be more common in New England than elsewhere. As pisser (and its eye dialect variant pissah) evolved to a positive sense, this could have retained the original negative sense. That said, Ive heard this from people definitely not from New England. —Soap— 11:37, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@Soap Added and attested :) Jjamesryan (talk | contribs) 18:27, 10 April 2021 (UTC)