etymological question: "jack shit"

[Douglas G. Wilson]

>>My point is that there is a tendency to fill in the blank with an almost
>>random obscenity or rude word. Logically preferable alternatives such as "I
>>didn't do a single erg/joule/watt-hour of useful work" just don't occur ....
>
>Not just (random or non-random) obscenities, though.  Other
>minimizers have their literal meaning bleached out as well--cf.
>STITCH (I didn't do a stitch of work all day) or Fr. PAS (originally
>'step', as reinforcer of pre-verbal negation on motion verbs, now
>generalized marker of negation).  I think what (or watt) rules out
>ergs and joules is not their referential meaning but their register.

Correct, I think. "Didn't work a lick" is still current too, I guess.

>>... there are "didn't do/know shit"
>>(rude/obscene), "didn't do/know dick" (rude/obscene), "didn't do/know
>>f*ck-all" (rude/obscene), etc. ... If I hear "didn't do/know jack" in a
>>similar context and register, I can't help thinking that it may have a
>>rude/obscene origin also -- assuming that there are reasonable candidates!
>
>How about "beans", though, which does occur in the 'not know ___'
>frame?  No obscenity here, although I guess there's a very indirect
>route to (auditory) rudenss.

Until proven wrong, I would assume "not worth a hill of beans" is a
euphemism for "not worth a pile of shit", similarly "doesn't know beans" a
euphemism for "doesn't know shit", "knows his onions" a euphemism for
"knows his shit", etc., etc. Some older members of my family would say
"You're full of beans" (meaning wrong, not energetic) -- a particularly
transparent euphemism IMHO. [I'm familiar with the alternative explanation
that beans, prunes, etc. have a laxative effect, but I think this may be a
retrospective attempt -- like "tinker's dam" may be -- to 'clean up' the
expression a little bit.]

I emphasize that I don't expect my assumption of underlying rudeness to be
correct in every case.

>I wonder, though, whether these may really have involved the use of the
>cover-term "curse" as a sort of euphemistic variable to avoid the
>REAL curse word that a speaker would have actually used in friendly
>conversation.

Sounds likely to me. On the other hand, 'curse' may be close to the
original sense of the rude word employed in "I don't give/care ...". While
"I don't give a shit" is an obvious metaphor ("shit" = "something
worthless"), "I don't give a f*ck" is not (this activity/commodity in fact
often commanding considerable value, monetary and otherwise). I suppose the
original sense may have been "I don't give a 'f*ck'", i.e., "I don't give a
(very cheap) interjection/curse" or "I don't even care enough to exclaim
'f*ck' [let alone to do anything about the matter]." Same for "I don't give
a damn/'damn'." Some 'synonymous' words which are not commonly used as
naked interjections are not commonly encountered here: e.g., one doesn't
[often] hear "I don't give a turd", "I don't give a screw", etc. I suppose
this has been discussed carefully somewhere ....

-- Doug Wilson