How Crap Got a Crappy Reputation

A friend’s young daughter “needed a bad word” so my friend gifted the girl with the word “crap.” I’ve been wondering ever since how did crap gain its crappy reputation? As a word I barely used it from the 1800s to 1900s, then in 1920, it gets a big boost thanks to a game of dice.

“Craps” the game however has been around since the crusades, 1096–1099. It was called Hazard then — prophetic. It became Craps when the squatting men rolling dice looked like toads ready to pounce on a tasty fly — the French started calling these men wagering on the throw of dice toads or “crapaud.” I suppose it was “crapaud” how much money a household lost to the rare occurrence of winning.

Then there is the version of crap that means the bits leftover from rendering fat — those solid impurities. Melt the fat on low heat over a long time. The fat liquifies leaving little bits of crap floating in the hot golden liquid. Depending on the animal those little bits taste like heaven or, well, you know-crap. The bits from cow fat have been compared to eating ear wax — who did that comparison I wonder? yuk! That had to have been crapaud as well.

Then I start to wondering — when I lose weight, when the fat melts from my body, where does it go? I know even without a scale when I’ve lost a few pounds as I have little bits of crap floating about my brain, long lost traumas float up and bubble on the surface released from their fat traps in my body — very disturbing at first but getting rid of that crap seems a good thing to me.

As for crap’s relation to solid waste excrement, well — as every farmer knows — that crap is pure gold for high crop yields. The latest gold rush is in compost and worm castings. A recent agribusiness report showed the annual profit per cow for milk was $300 and $450 dollars for manure! So how did crap get such a crappy reputation? Might be time for a new bad word.