Discussion Forum—A Way with Words, a fun radio show and podcast about language

HoÅŸ geldiniz.

I recently posted a question regarding why the dictionary — several dictionaries — omitted an intransitive entry for the verb to distress, as in “Don't distress. It will end well.” The simple answer is that dictionaries focus on the most common words and definitions, and most productive uses. They don't cover all cases exhaustively.

In this case, the verb to pee is certainly being used transitively. And I agree that this transitive use is the more common in my region of the US. However, to pee in my pants would not be wrong or mean anything different.

Most uses would be intransitive. A doctor might have you “pee in(to) a cup.” You might “pee in a swimming pool.” etc. You have mentioned one common transitive use, with a second one being “to pee the bed.” It is possible that these two limited transitive uses are by analogy to the more euphemistic “to wet my pants” or “to wet the bed.”

In some other cases, I could certainly imagine freely using pee transitively in a more directly transitive sense:
- I could smell that I was peeing the broccoli I ate for dinner.
- The frat boy peed the beer out in the alley behind the bar.
- I knew something was wrong when I started peeing blood.

So don't distress. I've remarked that dictionaries often omit these common but limited or restricted uses.