German · Germany · Austria · Switzerland
Scheiße
Scheisse/ˈʃaɪ̯sə/
Listen to how locals say it.
Meaning
Shit — feces, an exclamation, and a dismissal of something worthless (“alles Scheiße”).Machine-assisted translation
Pronunciation
- Romanization
- Scheisse
- IPA
- /ˈʃaɪ̯sə/
“SHY-suh” — ß is a sharp s.
How it's used
The default German swear and fairly mild. German’s Sie/du formality split matters more than the word itself: swearing while using Sie is the real breach.Machine-assisted translation
Cultural context
Wiktionary records both the literal and figurative “something worthless” senses with the synonym set Kacke/Kot/Scheiß.Machine-assisted translation
Literal meaning
feces
When to avoid it
Situations where people would rather you did not say it.
- At school — Depends. Depending on the teacher it earns a telling-off.
- At work — Depends. Common on site, avoided in office and client-facing settings.
Sources
Every claim on this page traces back to these entries.
Passages derived from these dictionary entries are redistributed under the same CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.