When I first caught sight of this week's theme, I was overjoyed. I'm currently working on something called The Poop Project: A Cultural Movement (thepoopproject.wordpress.com). Our goal is to create "poop positive" spaces by initiating public conversations about our often private business. In most modern cultures, poop is either invisible or euphemistically glazed over under the generalized, unclean heading of "dirt" (as the weekly subject of "Dirty Words" confirms). In fact, linguist Steven Pinker in his book The Stuff of Thought notes that: "When it comes to the referents of taboo terms, the English language has gone overboard with specialization, and fails to provide us with neutral terms for casual conversation." Which is to say that, if we want to talk about poop, we're forced to utilize words that are taboo, mildly dysphemistic, euphemistic, formal, childish or medical, leaving us linguistically barren of any casual, conversational terms that could, for example, be used on the news. So thank you, Anu Garg, for bringing this topic out of the water closet. I encourage you to join the movement, and help us in redefining this most basic bodily function for a healthier, more enlightened future.

Welcome. As far as I can see Anu is using eufemisms or words relating to other connotations. I see no banners or barricades here to promote 'dirty words'. All those neutral terms for casual conversation, we all know them. No need for someone to provide us with what we already know. It's a matter of taste I think, how far you want to use them at home , among friends or out in the public world. It's about keeping the balance; I don't mind a bit of taboo and eufemism. As long as people don't exagerate. Language would lose a number of funny, nuanced and creative words if we threw all eufemisms over board.

Ditto, Bran.

I've been away and was surprised by this week's theme. I was in a town in Alaska last year where one of the major enterprises was Scatology. The town was a center for jewelry and small sculpture pieces such a nativity scenes and chess sets carved from moose scat. I wonder if that makes this process scatological?

Only the chess set I suppose.

Periodically here at rodeos and county fairs we have
cow pie throwing contests ! ! !

Scat, droppings, bowel movement, stool, dung, spoor, frass (specialized and uncommon), turd, etc. are neither "dysphemistic, euphemistic, formal, childish [n]or medical." Nor are they inherently humorous, self-conscious, or evasive. "Stool" and "feces" have acquired a medical denotation, but only because those are the words used in the medical field, and there is little casual conversation on the subject elsewhere. I think the elderly, when talking to friends or family, use "bowel movement" most commonly (at least in my experience.) Technically, this phrase refers to the act rather than the product, but it has come to mean the product as well - much the same as one would say that one has made a "drawing" or a "painting." "Poop" seems to be the word currently used by the media, but the media hardly govern interpersonal speech.

Droppings are not treated any differently in conversation than other bodily products - we don't refer to spittle, ear wax, nasal mucus, vaginal secretions, pus, urine, or any other exudate (with the notable exceptions of perspiration and lacrimal secretions - tears) without at least a vague sense of unease, so perhaps we should organize projects to celebrate these items, as well.

The English meaning of feculent came as a shock. I am used to the French equivalent, differing only by an accent, which means simply 'starchy' and is applied to things like potatoes, pasta and beans. The Latin origin is the same; strange that dregs came to mean starch! When I logged in to comment I was amused, given the context, to find that an advert popped up "Stools - 24Hr delivery" - but not the feculent kind of stools!

Actually there is something like this going on with the Food and Drug Administration. The "Milk" industry wants only products that are from mammalian secretions to be labeled milk. This must be a truth in advertizing issue; no soy about it.
One more thing on this week's theme. I was also thinking about poop and naval architecture;the Poop Deck on a sailing vessel was the rear deck above the cabin, from the french word for stern, la poupe.

the Poop Deck on a sailing vessel was the rear deck above the cabin, from the french word for stern, la poupe. Thanks, kah; I didn't know that. Welcome, Pipistrel!

...which in turn is from Latin, puppis, the stern. The largest constellation of the Greco-Roman period, Argo Navis (the ship of the Argonauts), covered such a vast swathe of sky that in the 18th Century the ship was broken up into its constituent parts: Vela, the sails; Carina, the keel; and Puppis, the poop deck/stern. Pyxis, the compass, is sometimes unofficially included in the wreckage.