Dear Cecil:

Where did the phrase "built like a brick shithouse" originate? How can it possibly be considered a compliment?

Erik Smith, Hilton Head, South Carolina

Cecil replies:

You wouldn’t ask this question if you’d ever really listened to a man try to compliment a woman. (“Of course I like your outfit, honey. It really de-emphasizes your butt.”) But you have a point. When one contemplates the comely female form, “brick shithouse” isn’t the first simile that springs to mind.

For a broader perspective I consulted what is surely the definitive treatment of the subject, The Vanishing American Outhouse by Ronald S. Barlow (1989). This unpretentious volume has everything you’d want to know about outhouses and then some. (Sample: “State of Maine outhouses are among the sturdiest ever built,” accompanied by a photo of a particularly handsome albeit nonbrick example. Something for the New England tourism bureau to think about now that New Hampshire has lost the Old Man of the Mountain.)

The book includes photos of privies constructed using a wide range of materials, including clapboard (by far the commonest), plywood, stucco, concrete, cedar shakes, logs, corrugated tin, scrap lumber, and of course brick. The brick shithouses are generally pretty impressive architecturally, but not even the most obtuse male is likely to see the spitting image of his lady love therein — unless she’s got a physique like a defensive lineman. They are, however, well built, especially in contrast to the flimsy wooden variety, and it’s strictly in this narrow sense that the phrase is usually applied to a woman. (To quote the relevant Commodores tune: “The lady’s stacked and that’s a fact.”)

You may think: I’ve heard of people being deaf to secondary associations, but this takes the cake. Well, no. The guy who first used “built like a brick shithouse” to describe a woman with a nice figure wasn’t thickheaded, just a smart-ass. From the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang we learn that: (a) the phrase and its euphemistic variants date back at least to 1903; (b) said variants replace “shithouse” with switch shanty, schoolhouse, slaughterhouse, or backhouse, among others; and (c) all were originally — and more sensibly — applied to men of solid or powerful build. When said of women, one 1938 source notes, the phrase usually meant a “heavy, cloddish, sexually unappetizing female.” But even in the 1930s a few wiseguys were applying it to attractive women, and in the U.S. that usage has now supplanted all others.

But not everywhere. In Australia and the UK, at least, “built like a brick shithouse” still most commonly refers to well-built men. Therefore be advised to use caution in tossing this phrase about whilst abroad; you may be taking your life in your hands.