A pissing contest, pissing duel, or pissing match, is a game in which participants compete to see who can urinate the highest, the farthest, for the longest, or the most accurately.[
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Etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines a pissing contest as "a competition to see who can urinate the farthest or highest" and (in extended use) as "any contest which is futile or purposeless especially ones pursued in a conspicuously aggressive manner."[Oxford English Dictionary. "pissing match, n." OED Online. Oxford University Press. (accessed March 25, 2025).]
Urban Dictionary's crowdsourced definition describes the term as being used figuratively "to refer to a meaningless though nonetheless entertaining act in which people try to outdo one another in any way." Comments found there also describe pissing contests as literal competition "in which two or more people, usually (but not exclusively) male, urinate with the intention of producing the stream with the greatest distance."[Partridge, Eric and Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: J–Z, Volume 2, p. 1496, Oxford and New York: Routledge, , retrieved via Google Books on November 8, 2009]
Female world record
Havelock Ellis, in his book Studies in the Psychology of Sex, describes a female pissing contest in Belgium, in which two women each stood over a bottle with a funnel and urinated into it, the winner being the one who most nearly filled the bottle.[Havelock Ellis, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, volume 2 (1942), p. 407] Women can, once they have learned the right technique, urinate standing.[Jan Mommaert the Younger, Het Brabants nachtegaelken (Brussels, 1650).]
There is also early Irish literature about female pissing contests. In the story "Aided Derbforgaill" several women compete to see who can urinate deepest into a pile of snow. The winner is Derbforgaill, wife of Lugaid Riab nDerg, but the other women attack her out of jealousy and mutilate her by gouging out her eyes and cutting off her nose, ears, and hair, resulting in her death. Her husband Lugaid also dies, from grief, and Cú Chulainn avenges the deaths by demolishing a house with the women inside, killing 150.["One day in winter, when it had snowed heavily, the men made pillars of snow. The women stood on the pillars, and said, ‘Let’s piss on the pillars and see whose urine penetrates farthest. The best of us to keep will be the one who can reach right down to the ground.’ None of them could manage to penetrate all the way through the pillar to the ground. They called Derbforgaill, but she wasn’t keen – she thought it was foolish. But she was persuaded, and went onto the pillar, and her urine penetrated all the way to the ground." The Death of Derbforgaill Ulster Cycle texts Book of Leinster (c 1160) Paddy Brown website][Carl Marstrander (1911), “The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill”, Ériu 5, pp. 201–218]
In the animal kingdom
Pissing contests are not unique to humans. Trevor Corson's The Secret Life of Lobsters describes a pissing match between :
Metaphorical phrase
Dwight Eisenhower is reported to have said of Senator Joseph McCarthy that he wouldn't "get into a pissing contest with that skunk."[Bingham, Colin, Wit and wisdom: A Public Affairs Miscellany, p. 196, Melbourne University Press, 1982, , retrieved November 6, 2009]
The dispute between Carl Icahn and Yahoo! was described as pissing contest.[Teddy Jamieson No point in trying to be something you're not 1 March 30, 2002, p. 12 The Herald Glasgow (UK)] Steven Pinker's The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window to Human Nature credits the "Writer who thought up the indispensable pissing contest" and other crass phrases such as crock of shit, pussy-whipped, and horse's ass.
The Hippie Dictionary, a fringe counterculture publication, described the arms race between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. as a pissing contest in which each country developed bigger and more powerful weapons until "each super power could obliterate the other multiple times over as well along with the rest of the world" and that "the term super power did not refer to intelligence".[John Bassett McCleary The hippie dictionary: a cultural encyclopedia (and phraseicon) of the 1960s and 1970s
Edition revised Ten Speed Press, 2004 . 704 pages p. 25]
In popular culture
Alexander Pope included a pissing contest as part of the duncely games in Book 2 of The Dunciad (1728), with the winner awarded the female poet Eliza Haywood and a china chamber pot to the runner-up.[Rogers, Pat, The Alexander Pope encyclopedia, p. 153, Greenwood Press, , retrieved via Google Books on November 6, 2009]
A pissing contest takes place between two characters of the novel War of the Buttons.
A literal pissing contest and territorial marking is also depicted in Carroll Ballard's 1983 adaptation of Farley Mowat's autobiographical novel Never Cry Wolf.[Sean Axmaker Never Cry Wolf (1983) Amazon.com video review IMDB] In the movie Wolf there is a pissing contest between two competitors.[Maitland McDonagh Heeere's Johnny! The Many Horrifying Faces of Jack Nicholson; Wolf (1994) Alone in the Dark column October 25, 2009, AMC website] During a figurative pissing contest with a sleazy rival, Jack Nicholson's character confronts him in a bathroom,[Linda S. Kauffman Bad girls and sick boys: fantasies in contemporary art and culture p. 118] shows him he has just taken his job, fires him, and then pees on his shoes saying, "I'm just marking my territory, and you got in the way". The competitor, played by James Spader, notes that he has "suede shoes" to which Nicholson replies "asparagus".
Director Steven Sebring's (2008) captures Patti Smith in a "playful" pissing contest with Flea.
The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes (2009) includes a story about a husband and wife who compete in a pissing contest.[H. Aaron Cohl, Barry Dougherty The Friars Club Encyclopedia of Jokes: Over 2,000 One-liners, Straight Lines, Stories, Gags, Roasts, Ribs, and Put-Downs Edition revised Black Dog Publishing, 2009 . 512 pages, p. 301]
There is also early Irish literature about female pissing contests. In the story "Aided Derbforgaill" several women compete to see who can urinate deepest into a pile of snow.[Carl Marstrander (1911), “The Deaths of Lugaid and Derbforgaill”, Ériu 5, pp. 201–218]
In the third episode of the second series of Australian children’s TV show Round the Twist, all the boys gather around together at the boy’s toilet trough to see who can pee the highest. The bully character James Gribble is usually the one who wins, until a water spirit helps the young character Bronson win the competition by shooting his pee stream up the backing wall of the trough, above the flush box and over the wall for many other boys and girls to watch.
Pissing contest between two protagonists plays an important part in Alain Mabanckou's novel "Broken Glass".
See also
- Notes
- Bibliography
External links
