shitstorm

shit +‎ storm

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shitstorm (plural shitstorms)

1. (slang, derogatory, vulgar) A chaotic and unpleasant or violent situation.
   • 1948, Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead:

     The hell with Brown […] He's been missing all the shit storms. It's his turn.

   • 1963, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 110, in Cat's Cradle:

     'Sometimes the pool-pah,' Bokonon tells us, 'exceeds the power of humans to comment.' Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as 'shit storm' and at another point as 'wrath of God'.

   • 1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Part I:

     “...seem’s he’s been tumbling ass over teakettle—though there’s no way to tell in this murky shitstorm, no visual references...”

   • 1999, Joseph Finder, High Crimes:

     "You and your cowboys just stirred up a shitstorm, agent."

   • 2006, David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets:

     In Baltimore, the general rule is that if something looks like a shitstorm, smells like a shitstorm and tastes like a shitstorm, it goes to homicide.

2. (idiomatic, vulgar) Considerable backlash from the public.
   • 2010, Mungo MacCallum, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 32:

     When Abbott stated openly that his plan involved a new tax of 1.7% on large companies with big profit margins - those, in fact, most able to pay - he provoked a near universal shitstorm.

• → German: Shitstorm
• → Polish: gównoburza (calque)