'The Stable Yields a Stercoraceous Heap'

“The stable yields a stercoraceous heap

Impregnated with quick fermenting salts,

And potent to resist the freezing blast.”

Euphemism has its worthy uses. When deployed by politicians, we rightly dismiss it as dishonest, hypocritical masking of awkward truths. Here, William Cowper, in Book III, “The Garden,” of The Task (1785), is merely being polite, protecting the delicate sensibilities of his eighteenth-century readers (not that Swift would have done likewise). Readers of the entire poem, even those unschooled in Latin (stercus: “dung”), would know by context what Cowper meant by “a stercoraceous heap.” The OED, which cites Cowper’s usage, shares his delicacy and defines the word as “consisting of, containing, or pertaining to fæces.” In the vernacular, shitty.

The dictionary’s first citation is from John Arbuthnot’s extravagantly titled An Essay Concerning the Nature of Aliments, and the Choice of Them, According to the Different Constitutions of Human Bodies: “A putrid stercoraceous Taste and Odour.” Next comes a passage from Henri Louis Duhamel du Monceau’s A Practical Treatise of Husbandry (trans. John Mills, 1759) that echoes Cowper’s usage: “The stercoraceous salts of the dung.” The most recent and distasteful citation is taken from John Syer Bristowe’s A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Medicine (1876): “This discharge of ‘stercoraceous’ matter by the mouth is due . . . to the fact that [etc.].” This reads like a variation on a scene in Gravity’s Rainbow. The dictionary offers two additional definitions: “Of vomiting: Consisting of fæces, fæcal” and, from entomology, “Of certain beetles, flies, etc.: Frequenting or feeding on dung.” In short, a dung beetle. Read the balance of Cowper’s passage to see how the keeper of this English Augean stable methodically deals with the “agglomerated pile.”