A Tinker’s Damn
I don’t swear much any more. After the military and law enforcement it isn’t because I don’t know how, I can verbally blister paint anywhere in the world in multiple languages.
You may have heard the phrase: “it’s not worth a tinker’s damn,” and wondered why a “tinker’s damn” is considered such a trifle.
It was accepted that those who practiced certain trades, tinkers in England and shoemakers in much of the world, cursed almost constantly. Because it was expected that tinkers cursed, the curse had very little meaning.
I choose to reserve my curses on-line and off, so that when they do flow, people understand that a line has been crossed and I am well beyond annoyed.
8 comments
Strong language is a choice I make on a post-by-post basis. Typically I try to avoid it on serious posts, but I certainly allow myself to swear on snarky posts. Does swearing on the one kind of post weaken the other? Possibly. It’s a hazard of putting almost all of my posts on a single blog, a blog that has never quite been able to decide what it really wants to be. That was one motivation for creating my WordPress blog… a “polite site.” But I can’t have one site for each intended audience; I’d have a dozen blogs if I did that.
I don’t see cursing as a weakness, though; it’s just another vehicle for expressing oneself, suitable for use in some contexts and not in others.
Steve, the problem is when people use it too casually and it loses its ability to provide emphasis. Shakespeare was fond of curses, and quite inventive, as are most writers, but some people waste the inherent power by careless use of some the powerful and oldest words in the Anglo-Saxon vocabulary.
In general I am much nastier than the people who are overly fond of the coarse. I prefer to watch the victim bleed to death from a thousand minor cuts, than to bash their skulls in with a single stroke.
I’ve always heard that “a tinker’s dam” had nothing to do with swearing but rather the word was “dam” as in something that held back fluid. Tinkers used small pieces of bread to act as a form to fill in a hole in a tin vessel when they patched it with molten tin. After the patching was done, the bread was useless — and therefore not “worth a tinker’s dam.”
Maybe that’s a cleaned-up version of your story. Either way; isn’t language cool?
Language is a wonderful tool in competent and careful hands. Like any tool it can be used for creation or destruction depending on the craftsmanship of the user.
MB’s version is the one I heard in my youth. But I can well imagine tinkers cursing a lot, too, possibly having become insane from overexposure to lead.
Old language is particularly wonderful, and I’ve read a lot of it in pursuit of information about the old music I performed. Here’s a period English translation of a bit of advice from a French writer in 1688: “Of two notes one is commonly dotted but it has been thought best not to notate them for fear of their being performed by jerks.” By all means, let’s prevent performance by jerks! (The actual meaning: in France, pairs of eighth notes, though notated simply as two eighth notes, were usually swung or lilted in performance [hence “dotted”] as in mid-20th-century jazz, but French composers didn’t write the dot, because that would have been an indication of an even more extreme inequality of the two notes.)
But new language is fascinating too. I find it frustrating that wikipedia’s monitors tend to suppress neologisms, even if they are commonly in use in a segment of the population (particularly the blogosphere). Languages grow or die; I’d like ours to grow. (I guess I won’t be invited to tea by LitBrit.)
My Grandfather Emhof did a fair bit of whitesmithing [tin], brownsmithing [copper], and blacksmithing [iron], as well as being a wheelwright. That’s how he transitioned into auto body repair. A normal patch on tin was soldered in place, and clay was used as a “dam”.
I have noticed that hammers and heat tend to lead to colorful language.
To follow your tanget, Bryan, the word “playwright” comes from someone who wrought — crafted, form, molded — plays. I wonder if it was a neologism back then (which would make it today a paleologism…). If you’ve ever written a play, you know that using “wrought” is a good use; I struggle and wrestle with the form to craft the story, and I often find myself at the mercy of the characters, much as a smith is at the mercy of the material he/she is molding.
Languages grow or die; I’d like ours to grow. (I guess I won’t be invited to tea by LitBrit.)
Mr. Bates, I think you must have missed (or misinterpreted) my post of March 3, ’06: The Last Duchess: The Adverb is Dead; Long Live the Adjective!. I fully support the vibrancy and energy that new words and novel phrases bring to our beautiful language, particularly those efforts that do it with humor–and sometimes irony. What I deplore is the mangling of the English Language in situations that call for “standard English” and correct grammar, such as the writing or reading of news, or speeches by our leaders.
And please, no more tea jokes. I’ve been hearing them since my early days as an immigrant, which is to say, the mid-1970’s. Bo-ring.