“I wonder how many people will be waiting at Walmart Tire and Lube when it opens. It’s a crap shoot.”
Best guestimate on definition prior to research; courtesy of Jered
Castles in the 14th century did not have indoor plumbing, nor could the inhabitants be expected to leave the castles in inclement weather to use an outhouse. Therefore, indoor latrines were built on the exterior wall of the building that consisted of a raised area and hole, with a discharge chute that lead directly to the exterior wall of the castle. The excrement would leave the latrine and exit outside via this cute, leading to erosion of the exterior façade and uncommon and sometimes substantial plant growth in the area below the chute. Since some of the latrines were built on the higher-levels of the castle, where the excrement finally landed covered a wide-spread area, yielding varying results.
Truth in ‘guessed’ origin
These were actually called Garderobes (because they sometimes kept clothing in these rooms as well). Here’s a picture for reference. Jered heard on the BBC that people where actually paid a lot of money to go around and scoop up the poop or cover it with hay.
Modern/correct origins
When shooting in the game of craps, the dice that get rolled could be any combination, therefore the spelling would be ‘shoot’ and not ‘chute’. Sometimes this is spelled as one word, crapshoot, instead of two words, crap shoot. It should technically be ‘craps’ shoot; staying true to the name of the game, but by combining the two words it is assumed the extra ‘s’ just gets dropped off. The earliest examples are from the 1950s, but it was not widely used until the ’80s.
Quotations
1951, August 11, Bill Smith, The Billboard, article El Rancho Gets Mucho Puncho as Middleton, Robbins Go Over Big, page 3: The audience, mixed up between corny tourists and the crap-shooting hepsters, yocked it up to make Robbins a solid hit.
Hasn’t crossed the pond yet
Even today it is still primarily an Americanism, though a few scattered examples are easily found in non-U.S. sources1. Use on vacation in Mexico and they won’t know what you are talking about.
Definition
March 13th, 2014 ‘crap shoot’ was added to the Oxford Dictionary. This is the proper and documented spelling and definition of the phrase:
crap shoot (n.): a situation or undertaking regarded as uncertain, risky, or unpredictable.2
Yes, the modern definition makes more sense, but I much prefer our etymology.
Incorrect uses
A range of outcomes can occur resulting from a crap shoot situation. Good and bad. Just because the word ‘crap’ is used in the phrase, doesn’t mean the outcome is always ‘shitty’. Using the phrase to describe some situation where only bad outcomes can result would be incorrect. Shite Chute and Poop Chute are both slang for anus and cannot be used interchangeably with Crap Shoot.
Some Memes for your viewing pleasure
Idiom Schmidiom 