Word.ws English Dictionary

shitstorm

shitstorm noun: a chaotic and unpleasant or violent situation.

Noun

shitstorm (plural shitstorms)

  1. (derogatory, slang, vulgar) A chaotic and unpleasant or violent situation.
    • The hell with Brown […] He's been missing all the shit storms. It's his turn.1948, Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead
    • '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'.1963, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 110, in Cat's Cradle
  2. (idiomatic, vulgar) Considerable backlash from the public.
    • Near-synonyms: blowback, fallout
    • 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.2010, Mungo MacCallum, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 32
    Synonyms:
    blowback, fallout

Examples of shitstorm in a sentence

  • “...seem’s he’s been tumbling ass over teakettle—though there’s no way to tell in this murky shitstorm, no visual references...”1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Part I:
  • "You and your cowboys just stirred up a shitstorm, agent."1999, Joseph Finder, High Crimes:
  • 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.2006, David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets:

Synonyms of shitstorm

Forms of shitstorm

pluralshitstorms

Origin of shitstorm

From shit + storm.

Questions about shitstorm

What does shitstorm mean?
Shitstorm means a chaotic and unpleasant or violent situation.
How do you use shitstorm in a sentence?
“...seem’s he’s been tumbling ass over teakettle—though there’s no way to tell in this murky shitstorm, no visual references...”
What part of speech is shitstorm?
Shitstorm is a noun.
What is the plural of shitstorm?
The plural of shitstorm is shitstorms.

Words near shitstorm in the dictionary

  1. shitsticks
  2. shitstirrer
  3. shitstirrers
  4. shitstock
  5. shitstocks
  6. shitstorm
  7. shitstorms
  8. shitstream
  9. shitstreams
  10. shitsucker
  11. shitsuckers

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: shitstorm (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-shitstorm.ogg.

Cite this entry: “shitstorm.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/shitstorm. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.