Word.ws English Dictionary

know shit from Shinola

know shit from Shinola verb: to have the most basic level of intelligence or common sense.

Verb

know shit from Shinola (third-person singular simple present knows shit from Shinola, present participle knowing shit from Shinola, simple past knew shit from Shinola, past participle known shit from Shinola)

  1. (US, stative, vulgar) To have the most basic level of intelligence or common sense.
    • "He don't know shit from Shinola. (laughter) you know that? Always wondered how the Shinola people felt about that (laughter) Hi, I'm the new man from Shinola. (laughter) Hi, how are ya? Nice to see ya? (laughter) How are ya? (laughter)"30 October 1973, George Carlin, "Filthy Words", WBAI Radio, quoted in FCC Reports, Second Series, Volume 56, October 31, 1975 to January 16, 1976, page 101
    • "I'd like to comment on your May editorial, "Who's In Charge Here?" You may be a fair journalist, but you don't know shit from Shinola when it comes to karate."1974 August, S. George Pesare, “You Don't Know From Shoe Polish!”, in Black Belt Magazine, issue, pg. 10

Examples of know shit from Shinola in a sentence

  • You've got the logical form, the semantics, and all that, but you don't know shit from Shinola, and with your stupid heuristic learner you can't learn it unless somebody with authority tells you."1996, Kenneth M. Ford, Zenon W. Pylyshyn, The robot's dilemma revisited: the frame problem in artificial intelligence, page 28:
  • "Nowadays they've got all those captains and majors and lieutenants strutting around like it's May Day in Moscow, and they don't know shit from Shinola about how to run a ladies' jail."2008, Wally Lamb, The Hour I First Believed, Ch.1, at p.27

Synonyms of know shit from Shinola

Forms of know shit from Shinola

third-person singular presentknows shit from Shinola
present participleknowing shit from Shinola
pastknew shit from Shinola
past participleknown shit from Shinola

Origin of know shit from Shinola

A colloquialism which dates back to the early 1940s in the United States, sometimes ended with "that's why your shoes don't shine". Shinola was a popular brand of shoe polish.

Questions about know shit from Shinola

What does know shit from Shinola mean?
Know shit from Shinola means to have the most basic level of intelligence or common sense.
How do you use know shit from Shinola in a sentence?
You've got the logical form, the semantics, and all that, but you don't know shit from Shinola, and with your stupid heuristic learner you can't learn it unless somebody with authority tells you."
What part of speech is know shit from Shinola?
Know shit from Shinola is a verb.
What is the past tense of know shit from Shinola?
The past tense of know shit from Shinola is knew shit from Shinola.

Words near know shit from Shinola in the dictionary

  1. know one's own mind
  2. know one's place
  3. know one's shit
  4. know one's stuff
  5. know one's way around
  6. know shit from Shinola
  7. know someone
  8. know someone from a can of paint
  9. know someone from a hole in the ground
  10. know someone from a hole in the wall
  11. know someone from Adam

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: know shit from Shinola (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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