not know... v.
in phrs. below implying one’s confusion and/or ignorance.
In phrases
to know nothing whatsoever.
Good As Gold (1979) 432: I told him he didn’t know a sparrow’s shit about cowboys. |
to be totally ignorant of.
Freeman’s Jrnl (Sydney) 11 May 14/: Europeans didn’t know B from a bar of soap. | ||
Ballarat Star (Vic.) 25 Dec. 4/6: [of a racehorse] At the time I did not know Hollowback from a ... bar of soap. | ||
Taranaki Herald (NZ) 10 Dec. 2/4: ‘Well, I don’t know you from a bar of soap and you don’t get in’. | ||
Sydney Stock and Station Jnl (NSW) 10 Sept. 8/5: I may not know you ‘from a bar of soap,’ but I like your style. | ||
Age (Melbourne) 6 Apr. 12/1: ‘They might not know Ronald from a bar of soap’ [...] ‘You get the witnesses and I’ll tutor them up’. | ||
Cowra Free Press (NSW) 14 Jan. 6/3: ‘I don’t know you at all. I don’t know you from a bar of soap’. | ||
Narromine News (NSW) 21 Feb. 8/4: ‘No, mate [...] I never seen your name on jam tins. I don’t know you from a bar of soap’. | ||
Gundagai Indep. (NSW) 17 July 2/5: ‘Goodbye, Bob. These — coppers don’t know me from a — bar of soap. I’ll see you at — church!’. | ||
Cosmopolitan (US) 142 87/2: Some guy he didn’t know from a bar of soap. | ||
Counsel for the Defence 18: Mr Thomas, whom I don’t know from a bar of soap. | ||
Ship from Outside n.p.: [A] brand new Chief Officer whom I wouldn’t know from a bar of soap. | ||
I’m a Jack, All Right 66: You don’t know ’em from a bar of soap. | ||
Cradle to the Grave 72: Faulkner, whom Savage [...] didn’t know ‘from a bar of soap’. | ||
South Africa’s Intelligence Services 11/1: 63 people, some of whom I did not know froma bar of soap. | ||
Voices of Aboriginal Aus. 414: They arranged a marriage to somebody I didn’t know from a bar of soap. | ||
Borderline 46: [T]hese people who I donlt know from a bar of soap. | ||
Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. | ||
O’Malley’s Irish Pub 56: [T]he landlord didn’t know me from a bar of soap. |
to be in a state of confusion.
Hogfather (1997) 62: It got so’s you didn’t know it was bum or breakfast time. | ||
Going Postal [ebook] ‘Lads come down [...] with their eyes spinning and their hands shaking and no idea if it’s bum or breakfast time’. |
(Aus. / S.Afr.) to be in a state of confusion.
Gayle. | ||
Journals Book 2 463: Colin wouldn’t know Christmas from Bourke Street, but he’s a got a donger the size of a dijeridu. | ||
Dogs of War [ebook] That little bloke there [...] doesn’t seem to know Christmas from Bourke Street. But [...] he’s always got a full quid’. |
to be in a state of confusion.
🌐 A piece of ice caught me a devil of a welt on the head and for a moment I didn’t know if it was Piccadilly or Wednesday. | letter 8 Jan.
(Aus.) to be in a state of confusion.
Sydney Morn. Herald 7 June 35: [O]ne of those drongos who are mad as a gumtree full of galahs and don’t know if it's Pitt Street or Christmas. | ||
Farm Managemnt Econ. Analysis 35: Whether this has mainly come about from consultants confused about whether it is Tuesday or Bourke Street (Victoria; Pitt Street or Christmas, NSW), or illywhackers running slanters, does not much matter. | ||
https://www.picturesofengland.com 🌐 Doesn’t know if it's Pitt street or Christmas. to be confused (a country bloke confused at all the lights of Sydney's Pitt Street). | ||
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au 23 Dec. 🌐 [T]he description of someone who, let’s say, struggles with the complexities of life: ‘He wouldn’t know if it was Pitt Street or Christmas’. |
1. to be confused, usu. as to one’s aims and intentions.
Inverell Times (NSW) 16 May 3/2: [B]ackers and bookies won't know if they are on Arthur or Martha. | ||
Dly Mirror (Sydney) 7 Sept. 6/2: Bombers dropped their loads on Lae until the Japs didn't know whether they were Arthur ... or Martha. | ||
Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1958) 52: You chuck it up and you’re right as pie till you eat again. And so it goes on. You don’t know if you’re Arthur or Martha. | ||
G’DAY 98: A bloke who doesn’t know what he’s about doesn’t know if he’s Arthur or Martha. | ||
The Lingo 92: Rhyming slang is not the only area in which rhyme is worked to good effect. A number of other common terms use this device, including: arthur or martha (didn’t know if they were arthur or martha) meaning confused. | ||
Guardian 8 Sept. 16: Half the time she’s trying to break monopolies [...] the other half she’s trying to award the juiciest monopoly of them all. Poor old thing, no wonder she doesn’t know whether she’s Arthur or Martha. | ||
Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. | ||
🌐 Sometimes I don't know if I'm Arthur or Martha as I toggle between English, Danish, Spanish, German and Russian keyboards. | on X 5 Dec.
2. of a man, to be ambivalent about one’s own sexuality.
[ | Blackwood-Warren Sentinel (Bridgetown, WA) 23 Oct. 7/3: Just over seven hundred adults and children attended the Children’s Fancy Dress Ball [...] Senior Section most original costume, ‘Arthur or Martha,’ Maureen Rooke]. | |
Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 232: ‘He doesn’t know if he’s Arthur or Martha’ or ‘Angus or Agnes’. | ||
Maledicta IX 195: This article and series devoted to sexual slang would be incomplete without some notice of catch phrases, both British and American: [...] he doesn’t know if he’s Arthur or Martha (butch or femme). |
3. a phr. used after swimming, to describe a man whose genitals have shrunk dramatically on contact with the cold water.
Maledicta IV:2 (Winter) 195: After swimming, one may still hear the expression I’m so cold I don’t know if I’m Agnes or Angus (or Arthur or Martha, as they put it in Australia). |
see under not know if one’s arsehole is bored or punched under arsehole n.
see under arsehole n.
(US) to be very stupid.
End as a Man (1952) 193: You don’t know your butt from a bear’s ass. | ||
Maledicta 1 (Summer) 13: Other rural phrases adding up to the same thing include the accusation that one doesn’t know his butt from a gourd, or don’t know frog-shit from pea-soup. |
(N.Z.) to be mentally unstable; to be ignorant.
Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. |
1. to not have any idea about a topic.
q. in LRB 6. Dec. 2018 [online] He made a point of purging some of Roosevelt’s most trusted advisers, firing Henry Morgenthau (‘didn’t know shit from apple butter’). | ||
(con. 1948) Flee the Angry Strangers 177: Those replacement kids scuffin about out there [...] not knowin shit from good apple butter. | ||
Garden of Sand (1981) 105: You don’t know shit from beans. | ||
Semi-Tough 197: [He] had to be one of those Eastern, lockjaw motherfuckers who wouldn’t know shit from tunafish. | ||
Muvver Tongue 41: Someone abysmally ignorant ‘doesn’t know shit from clay’. | ||
Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 125/2: wouldn’t know shit from clay naive or stupid persons. | ||
Dict. of Invective (1991) 342: doesn’t know beans; doesn’t know dung from honey. | ||
(con. 1969) Suicide Charlie 66: Same-same didn’t know shit from a salami and I didn’t care what he thought. | ||
Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 234: wouldn’t know shit from clay — unless you tasted it Severely limited person. | ||
(con. WWII) | Never Anticipate the Command 95: Sergeant Horton [...] screamed and hollered [...] ‘You don’t know shit from beans, you don't know your ass from a hole.” Over and over again, he would berate us.||
(con. 1955) | Frantic Frank Lane 57: Chuck Comiskey [...] didn’t know shit from apple butter.
2. to be particularly wrong in an opinion.
(con. 1946) Big Blowdown (1999) 53: Those guys don’t know shit from apple butter. |
1. (also not know shit from shine, ...toothpaste) to not have any idea about a topic; thus know shit from Shinola, to be aware, to be knowledgeable; turn shit into Shinola, to make an improvement.
[ | cited in Lo, the Former Egyptian text unavailable]. | |
Three Stories 41: ‘[W]hen it comes to some things, you don’t know shit from shinola’. | ||
in Sweet Daddy 63: Take most these babes [...] they don’t know shit from shinola. | ||
(con. 1945) Tattoo (1977) 344: They don’t know shit from Shinola when it comes to all us who worked like niggers all our lives. | ||
Blood Brothers 156: Shouting at her that she was a dumb cunt and didn’t know shit from Shinola. | ||
Cutter and Bone (2001) 263: That do sound like Mister Humperdinck don’t know cattle from Shinola. | ||
Duke of Deception (1990) 138: You’re still a pup, don’t know shit from shine about anything. | ||
Fort Apache, The Bronx 233: You guys have been on this job ten, fifteen years, and you don’t know shit from shinola. | ||
Paco’s Story (1987) 174: Some rear-rank slick-sleeve private (who doesn’t know dismounted, close-order drill from shit and Shinola). | ||
Observer 6 June 145/1: We received 90 scripts a week [...] at that level you get the garbage and have to turn the shit into shinola. | ||
Green River Rising 162: Some of his guys didn’t know shit from toothpaste. | ||
(con. 1949) Big Blowdown (1999) 160: Course, Costa, he don’t know shit from Shinola. | ||
(con. 1964–8) Cold Six Thousand 513: The geek didn’t know. The geek knew shit from Shinola. | ||
Observer 2 Sept. 102/2: As Rolf Wolf used to say about the press, ‘They don’t know shit from Shinola’. |
2. to be particularly wrong in an opinion; thus shit from Shinola n., nonsense, nothing, anythingnote euph. shin in cit. 1987.
Hero Ship 60: How’ll that look? The usual ‘shit from Shinola?’. | ||
Hot to Trot 8: Irene doesn’t know shit from Shinola. Why shouldn’t I go out to the old homestead? | ||
Drylongso 110: As long as they can get folks to say that shit is shinola, they would rather deal shit any day. | ||
Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-In 81: The alert reader — if any of you turkeys know a shin from Shinola. | ||
Get Your Cock Out 13: The Northern skinhead knew his shit from his shinola. | ||
(con. 1975–6) Steel Toes 164: Make sure he knows better than to testify or say shit about Shinola. |
(US) to be wholly ignorant.
(con. 1991-94) City of Margins 193: ‘You don’t know shit from a hole in the ground’. |
(US) not to know anything.
Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 35: He said if we would give him work he’d do the best he could, / Though he didn’t know straight up about a cow. | ‘Little Joe, the Wrangler’ in||
Silver Eagle 16: ‘He’s a big chump,’ said Campi. ‘How he ever made all that dough I’ll never tell! He don’t know straight up’. | ||
Vanity Row 19: ‘He’s the kind who don’t know straight up. So he’s the Chief. So a guy’s got to have friends—pull’. |
see under behind n.
(US) to be completely ignorant, deluded.
in Sweet Daddy 22: Got to hear some of these cons talking about chicks. Poor bastards don’t know which side is up. |