shitstorm

plural shitstorms

1. derogatoryslangvulgarA chaotic and unpleasant or violent situation.

   "You and your cowboys just stirred up a shitstorm, agent."

   1999, Joseph Finder, High Crimes

   4 more examples

   The hell with Brown […] He's been missing all the shit storms. It's his turn.

   1948, Norman Mailer, The Naked and the Dead

   'Sometimes the pool-pah,' Bokonon tells us, 'exceeds the power of humans to comment.' Bokonon translates pool-pah at one point in The Books of Bokonon as 'shit storm' and at another point as 'wrath of God'.

   1963, Kurt Vonnegut, chapter 110, in Cat's Cradle

   “...seem’s he’s been tumbling ass over teakettle—though there’s no way to tell in this murky shitstorm, no visual references...”

   1973, Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow, Part I

   In Baltimore, the general rule is that if something looks like a shitstorm, smells like a shitstorm and tastes like a shitstorm, it goes to homicide.

   2006, David Simon, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets

2. idiomaticvulgarConsiderable backlash from the public.

   Near-synonyms: blowback, fallout

   1 more example

   When Abbott stated openly that his plan involved a new tax of 1.7% on large companies with big profit margins - those, in fact, most able to pay - he provoked a near universal shitstorm.

   2010, Mungo MacCallum, The Monthly, April 2010, Issue 55, The Monthly Ptd Ltd, page 32

   Synonyms: blowback, fallout