know shit from shinola

English - English

Definition of know shit from shinola in English English dictionary

To have the most basic level of intelligence or common sense

See what I mean Shiela? 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..

Etymology

() A colloquialism which dates back to the early 1940s in the United States. Shinola is a a once-popular, now-defunct shoe polish brand, which had a color and texture not unlike feces; the joke in the idiom being that only a stupid person could confuse the two upon more than a passing glance.