SYDNEY- Top linguists from the English-speaking world convened in Sydney, Australia on Monday and reached a difficult consensus regarding the proper spelling of
"sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit."
The word is a semi-euphemistic variant of [expletive deleted] which is used as an interjection to convey slightly bemused disbelief of something another person says.
In a 219-144 vote, the convention approved the official spelling of the word as including nineteen e's.
The decision will facilitate consolidation of Google searches and standardization of the word's entry in vernacular dictionaries.
It will also prevent hostilities such as those that broke out at the Midwest Regional Spelling Bee in Des Moines, Iowa last October.
"The letter 'e' conveys the optimum emphasis on disbelief and derision to a reader when it appears nineteen consecutive times in the word," said convention chairman Donald Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeipley.
At one point in the conference, the Pro-Twenty E's contingent threatened to walk out because they were adamant that nineteen e's would be too difficult to quickly type into Google searches. Nineteen is a prime number that isn't easy to mentally break down and type in smaller groupings.
The Pro-Nineteen E's lobby held their ground, insisting that an extra 'e' for the sake of a nice, round, divisible number would tax the attention span of the reader.
The Pro-Twenty group, realizing they were outnumbered, gave a collective sigh and said, "Sheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeit," then returned to their seats.
Google returns results for spellings into the hundreds of e's, making it extremely difficult to do serious research into the use of the word in popular culture.
