What's the Poop on Poop?

The word I referred to on Wednesday as a second illustration of the use of the combination word –philia is coprophilia. (The suffix –philia refers to an abnormal attraction.) The copro- part of the word comes from the Greek word kopros, which means dung. Synonyms including feces, but my dictionary puts coprolite in brackets. Coprolite is defined as the fossilized excrement of animals. The word coprophilia was formed in 1934.

Other words using the prefix copro- are coprology (the study or treatment of scatological or pornographic subjects in art or literature), coprophagous (feeding on dung, as some beetles do), and coprophilia, which is defined as a Psychological term referring to the abnormal interest in feces (which after today you may accuse me of, which is why I’m doing this on vacation).
So what is the difference between dung, feces, and excrement?

Dung, which is found in both Middle English and Old English, is probably identical with a prison which was made originally from a cellar covered with dung for warmth, as was used in Old Saxon and Old High German was spelled tung, and referred to a cellar where women wove. Those words came from the IndoEuropean base word dheng-, which meant to cover. Dung is used now as the word that refers to animal excrement, or manure. (It’s also used as a synonym for filth.) Neither dungeon nor dungarees has any association with dung.

Feces is a noun plural and refers to waste matter expelled from the bowels, or human excrement. It comes from the Latin faeces, which is the plural of faex, which means dregs or lees. (Sometimes definitions require defining – dregs are the solid matter which settle at the bottom of a liquid and lees refer to the solid matter which settle at the bottom of wine.) It came to English in the mid-1400s.

Excrement is a synonym for feces and dung, and is the more “polite” word. It came originally from the Latin word excrementum which is from the Latin word excretus, from which we get excrete. From Latin it came through French (excrement) before it came to English. It can be used for animal or human waste. While it came to English in the 1530s, it originally referred to any bodily secretion, but since the mid-18th century has been exclusively used of feces.

So what’s the word for the study of feces or of fossil excrement? Scatology. The prefix scato- comes from the Greek skor, which is the genitive form of the word skatos, which means excrement. Skatos comes from the IndoEuropean base word sker-, which means to defecate, and from there goes to Old Norse as skarn, and Old English as scearn, which was another word for dung that didn’t last as far as Middle English. It originally referred to obscene literature, and the short form scat (referring also to dung) is from the 1950s.

Poop is another scatological word, probably from the Middle English word puopen, which meant to make an abrupt sound or blow or gulp. It is a both an onomatopoetic and a slang word. It isn’t much of a leap from passing gas to poop and it’s only conjecture, but from via some dialect it came to refer to excrement. It is found as long ago as 1744.