Shitsburgh
noun · first attested 2000s
A city was insulted so publicly that its own newspapers would print only the rhyme.
A coarse nickname for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, also used generically of any town thought unpleasant or dead-end.
40.4417°N -80.0000°W · Q1342
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- Well attestedThe place link is the standard scholarly account.
- Usage
- VulgarCoarse or taboo in ordinary register.
- Attested
- 2000s
- Part of speech
- noun
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Pittsburgh
- In English
Shitsburgh
The name substitutes a taboo syllable for Pitts, and Wiktionary records both the Pittsburgh sense and a generic one for any run-down town. It reached a national audience in October 2006, when the actress Sienna Miller, then filming The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, used it of the city in a Rolling Stone interview; local papers reported the remark as a profane word that rhymes with Pittsburgh, and Miller apologized within days. Urban Dictionary entries from 2009 onward all gloss it as Pittsburgh, one of them calling it the name used by anyone not from there.