Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Quantificational Uses of ‘Crap’

CrapCrap, diddlysquat, squat, shit, jackshit, jack.

Crap and cognates as universal quantifiers.  It is indeed curious that words for excrement can assume this logical role.

'No one owes you crap' = 'No one owes you anything' = 'Nothing is such that anyone owes it to you' = 'Everything is such that no one owes it to you.'

'He doesn't know jack' = 'He doesn't know anything.' 

'He doesn't know shit, so he doesn't know shit from shinola.'  In its first occurrence, 'shit' functions as a logical quantifier; in its second, as a non-logical word, a mass term.

You Don't Know Jack About Kerouac. A Trivia Test.

Addendum (26 February):  Steven comments, "I have my doubts about "crap" meaning "anything." I think it means "nothing", but appears in acceptable double-negative propositions which, because of widespread colloquial usage. The evidence I bring forth is the following. "You've done shit to help us" means "You've done nothing to help us," not "You've done anything to help us."
 

BV:  I see the point and it is plausible.  But this is also heard: 'You haven't done shit to help us.'  I take that as evidence that 'shit' can be used to mean 'anything.'  Steven would read the example as a double-negative construction in which 'shit' means 'nothing.'  I see no way to decide between my reading and his. 

Either way, it is curious that there are quantificational uses of 'shit,' 'crap,' etc!

 


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