Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the paper money issued by the Confederate States during the US Civil War.

1890–1904

Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

2. in fig. use, nothing, anything at all.

1843		W.T. Thompson Major Jones’s Courtship (1872) 49: Tom Stallins had [...] one grate big yaller cur, what wasn’t worth shucks to trail.
1850		W.C. Hall ‘Mike Hooter’s Bar Story’ Spirit of the Times 26 Jan. (N.Y.) 581: Them curs o’ his’n wasn’t worth shucks in a bar fight.
1856		G.G. Foster N.Y. by Gas-Light (1990) 86: He never had such a run of bad luck in his life, and that he ‘cannot play for shucks’.
1868		‘Hurrah for Grant!’ Grant Songster 3: He hasn’t been worth ‘shucks’.
1871		E. Eggleston Hoosier School-Master (1892) 155: I’ll lick yer till yer hide wouldn’t hold shucks.
1872		Schele De Vere Americanisms 45: A common saying has it that a man or a thing is not worth a shuck or not worth shucks.
1876		B. Harte Gabriel Conroy III 118: The mine ain’t worth shucks now!
1884		(con. c.1840) ‘Mark Twain’ Huckleberry Finn (2001) 113: Trees won’t grow worth shucks in a Cincinnati graveyard.
1891		F.D. Srygley Seventy Years in Dixie 238: Well, Josh, he never could preach wuth shucks.
1894		Courier (Lincoln, NE) 17 Nov. 3/2: I can’t dance for shucks, so I’m of no earthly use at a dance.
1899		H. Garland Boy Life on the Prairie 142: They’re planning to lick us like shucks, that’s all. [Ibid.] 372: I can’t wrestle for shucks.
1901		Monroe & Northup ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:iii 147: shuck, n. [...] In phrase ‘gone to shucks’ = gone to pieces financially, failed, petered out.
1904		J.W. Carr ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in DN II:vi 421: shucks, n. Term of contempt. ‘The old man ain’t worth shucks.’.
1909		Gem 6 Feb. 25: One single Uhlan don’t amount to shucks.
1909		Truth (Brisbane) 12 Sept. 4/7: Lionel is no class at all, and he can’t spar for ‘shucks’.
1915		G. Bronson-Howard God’s Man 38: The first kind don’t amount to shucks.
1920		F.S. Fitzgerald ‘The Jelly Bean’ in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald V (1963) 217: I ain’t worth shucks.
1927		(con. 1917) J. Stevens Mattock 221: He had seemed to be agreeable and had never done anything insubordinating that he could be bawled out for, but he certainly wasn’t any shucks of a soldier.
1929		S. Ornitz Haunch Paunch and Jowl 50: I talked with the politicians. Oh, they don’t make any shucks about it.
1936		C. Sandburg People, Yes 92: I always did say that car was no shucks in a real pinch.
1939		P.G. Brewster ‘Folk “Sayings” From Indiana’ in AS XIV:4 263: The good-for-nothing ‘don’t amount to shucks’.
1949		Sat. Eve. Post 5 Mar. 122/3: Birdie Elkins can’t orate for shucks [DA].