No Great Shakes

Hello, you have A Way with Words. Hi, this is Kat calling from Dallas, Texas. Hi, Kat. Welcome to the show.

Thank you. What’s up? I have a phrase that I’ve said since I was a kid, and it’s something I learned from my mother, and it’s no great shakes. For instance, if you said, oh, John’s wonderful. He volunteers at the church all the time. He’s a loving husband. You might say, oh, he’s no great shakes. And it’s because you happen to know something about him, such as, well, he’s no great shakes. He steals from the collection plate.

Oh, my. You’re wondering about the origin of that?

Yeah, I had a friend and she refused to believe that that was an actual saying. She would say, no, you’re just weird. You get that from your mother. She says all kinds of weird things. But then she read a book by a Japanese author and the phrase was in there and she came to me and she said, oh my God, that’s not just something you and your goofy family say. It’s an actual thing.

Oh yeah. I say it all the time. No great shakes. Meaning no big deal.

Not a big deal, yeah.

Nothing to make a big party about.

Yeah.

And I have to say, when I was growing up, I thought it had to do with milkshakes. You know, like a chocolate milkshake that just, you know, is a little bit melted. When you’re a kid, those are way up there in the list of desirable things.

I know, right?

But that’s probably not the origin.

Definitely not the origin.

Definitely not the origin.

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s a fairly common expression, actually. There are a couple of theories about it. There’s one that it has to do with throwing dice. And if you’re shaking your hand with the dice in it and then you throw a bad toss, that it was no great shake. But I don’t really buy that one.

The other one that makes more sense to me is that shake boast is an old expression that means to swagger or be boastful. And if you have no great shake, then you’re not really anything to boast about.

But I don’t, you know.

They’re both kind of am iffy.

Yeah, the evidence we have on these isn’t very convincing, I don’t think.

Yeah, the term just kind of pops up free of any kind of suggestive context, right?

Yeah.

But on the other hand, we do have gambling does kind of insinuate itself into the casual language in the United States.

Definitely.

It’s pretty much everywhere.

Yeah.

Is it old-fashioned?

Yeah.

Yeah, it’s got a good long history going back to the early 1800s at least, maybe even earlier. Because a lot of times when I use that phrase, people look at me and they’ll say, I love the way you talk. You say the weirdest stuff. And it’s like they’ve never heard it before.

But you told me it’s fairly common.

Yeah, it’s common enough.

Yeah, I don’t think it. I think probably if you surveyed a group of adults across a wide variety of ages, half the people would know it immediately. I mean, I’m just guessing here, but I think it’s common enough for that.

The fact that the translator of it, was it obviously written in English, the Japanese book? Who was the author?

I heard from Murakami. So, yeah, Murakami doesn’t write in English. That the translator felt it appropriate to translate from Japanese into English suggests that the translator thought it was current enough to use, that the average literate reader would get it.

I’m going to have to get that book again and read it again so I can see. Because I did read it myself, and I saw that, and I was like, yeah, it’s the same.

Yeah.

But I’ll have to see how it would be.

Yeah, it’s the same. And I would say that I love the fact when people point out odd things in your language, I would take that as a badge of pride. It’s just your literacy coming through, right?

Kat, you’re not as weird as you thought.

Oh, I never thought I was weird. I thought they were just misinformed.

Yeah, there we go.

That’s the attitude.

You’re right.

And that’s the solution to everything. Call weird people to confirm that you’re not weird.

I am normal. The three of us are not weird.

All right.

Nice look what we got.

Thank you so much.

All right?

Thank you.

Take care.

Bye-bye.

Bye.

Do you say no great shakes, Grant?

Yeah.

I mean, it wouldn’t be something I would say all the time. I’d probably more like to say no big deal.

Speaking of other gambling terms in English.

There we go.

Well, maybe it is a gambling term. I just don’t see evidence for it, really.

No, there’s no evidence for either one of those. They’re both really insubstantial. It pops up like 18, 19 or so. And I read through all the early citations in the Oxford English Dictionary, did some digging on my own. I’m like, I got nothing here.

That’s typically how it works. You can spend a week on a term and be no better off than you were when you started.

And we do. So take advantage of that by calling us 877-929-9673 or send your stories about language in email to words@waywordradio.org.