A new use of "duh?"

[Wilson Gray]

Trying to pin down the origin of slang is enough to bring a grown man to
tears. I've never heard or read "No shit, Dick Tracy," before today. And
"don't know jack shit" is, to me, relatively new. I don't think that I ever
heard it before the late '60's, if then. But "No shit (Sherlock)" is an old
friend, though I can't remember anything for certain one way or the other re
"When did you get the [first] clue?"

-Wilson Gray

On 3/7/06, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> Subject:      Re: A new use of "duh?"
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>
> I have nothing on "No shit, Sherlock [or 'Dick Tracy']" before the mid '
> 70s, but they seemed to be well known at the time.  (The same is true for
> "don't know jack shit.")
>
>   A fellow graduate student told me that "No shit, Sherlock" was often
> followed by "When did you get the [first] clue ?"  I haven't encountered
> that again, though.
>
>   JL
>
> Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at BABEL.LING.UPENN.EDU> wrote:
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> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Benjamin Zimmer
> Subject: Re: A new use of "duh?"
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>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
> > The passage of time probably explains everything. No shit (Sherlock) /
> no
> > shit (Shinola) dates to the late '40's - early '50's in speech. That it
> > should have precisely the same meaning a half-century later is not to be
> > expected.
>
> And later clarified:
> > Finally, as soon as I had clicked on "Send," I realized that I had
> crossed
> > "no shit" with "you don't know shit from Shinola" to get the
> non-occurring
> > "No shit, Shinola."
>
> What are the earliest cites we have for "no shit, Sherlock" anyway?
> There's just one "Sherlock" cite in the OED3 draft entry for "no shit"
> and it's late (1994). And what about the closely related "no shit,
> Dick Tracy"? Did the two forms come of age around the same time? I can
> find cites for "Dick Tracy" from 1978-79 on Amazon/Google Book Search,
> but it shows up in two memoirs recalling the '50s (from c. 1952 in
> John Singlaub's _Hazardous Duty_ and from 1957 in Leonard Bird's
> _Folding Paper Cranes_).
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
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