"Shut up!" - The Analysis (Part One)

Ah, yes, 'Shut up' -- that over-used phrase no one in the world has not used yet.

In the olden times, this used to mean, "Keep quiet!" (I was about to type "Shut up!" =.="). In this context, it is a verb and it refers, well, to our mouth. Hence, it's like, "Shut your mouth!" It's just that "Shut!" sounds too short for any impact whatsoever so an additional word was added to the phrase, making it longer and harder for people to miss out what you said.

Interestingly, 'shut up' is somewhere along the lines of closing. 'Shut down' is also somewhere along the lines of closing, or rather, being switched off. However, 'up' and 'down' are opposites, much?

Anyway, that's for the olden times. Nowadays, this phrase may still be used in that context but by tweaking the tone and the way you say it by just a bit, it can have a completely different meaning. The Bimbos would usually say the 'up' part in a much higher tone than the 'shut' part and there is also a longer pause between the two tones. When used in this manner, the phrase would portray the speaker's utter disbelief in something. The aforementioned manner of saying the phrase is usually said more intensely than this way.

By the way, that's just the more commonly heard meanings but of course, there are more, such as to terminate or to enclose.

Anyway, nowadays, the term 'shut up' is seldom used to ask someone to keep quiet. The phrase now used is a bit modified to make it more impactful, hence instead of 'shut up', 'shut the f*** up' is now in. This makes it ruder, hence obviously better and again, it has two meanings, both mentioned above. However, the other meanings in the link above does not apply to this phrase. Basically, 'shut the f*** up' is the same with 'shut up', except that it has more emphasis on the meaning as it has a word generally considered as a vulgarity. This phrase is often abbreviated as 'STFU'.

In our second segment of this Analysis, we will look into the influence of the phrase in pop culture. Well, not exactly, we'll just be listening to random songs with that phrase in it to prove that it's pretty mis-used.

Till then, I love y'all and byebye!

~sudesna

Quote of the post:
Until I was 13, I thought my name was 'Shut Up.'
-- Joe Namath