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I understand that 'shucks' is a slang that is:

used especially to express mild disappointment or embarrassment

and this definition is listed separately from 'shuck' (the verb/noun) in merriam-webster.

Oxford dictionary online lists 'shucks' under 'shuck' as:


(shucks) informal

used to express surprise, regret, irritation, or, in response to praise, self-deprecation: 'Thank you for getting it.' 'Oh, shucks, it was nothing.'

But neither explains why the exclamation must be 'shuck' + 's'. I don't really know if the 's' expresses a plural (from the noun 'shuck') or a 3rd person singular (from the verb 'shuck').

Some online sources like Urban Dictionary says it is

a combination of f*** and sh*t

which I'm not really believing as I don't really hear people say 'aw f**k sh*ts' -it'd be more like 'f***ing sh*t'.

So, why is there an '-s' ending in this usage?

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Urban Dictionary is full of sh*t. The term has no rude connotations (other than when it's used as a mild oath). – Hot Licks Aug 24 '15 at 21:36
up vote 11 down vote accepted

Etymonline lists the origin of shucks thusly:

Interjection shucks is 1847, from sense of "something valueless" (not worth shucks).

So, the -s termination comes from the plural in the original, longer expression.

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I had no idea that "shucks" was connected with the noun "shuck". – Colin Fine Sep 12 '11 at 11:54
I have a feeling that it's a contraction of "Fish-hooks" but I can't give a citation - maybe Huck Finn? – peterG Jan 19 '14 at 2:28
@peterG - I have a few times (perhaps in Huck Finn) read an oath along the lines of "aw, fish-hooks", but I'm doubting that it's closely related to "shucks". – Hot Licks Aug 25 '15 at 2:17

'Not worth shucks'

John Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms, first edition (1848) has this entry for shuck:

SHUCK. The outer husk or shell of the walnut, chestnut, &c.; or the husk of Indian corn. In England, the word is applied to pods as well as husks; as, pea-shucks. Not worth shucks, is a Southern expression meaning good for nothing.

[Example:] If them thar is all he's got to offer, he aint worth shucks; and if you don't lick him you aint worth shucks, neither.—Robb, Squatter Life.

[Example:] They had three or four hounds, and one great big yellow cow, what wasn't worth schuks to trail.—Maj. Jones's Courtship, p. 48.

The Robb quotation is taken from John Robb, Streaks of Squatter of Life, and Far-west Scenes: A Series of Humorous Sketches Descriptive of Incidents and Character in the Wild West (1843). The expression "worth shucks" actually appears twice in that book—first in "Telegraphing an Express," a story set near East St. Louis, Illinois, where three men from St. Louis, Missouri (on the other side of the Mississippi River) charter "a wagon and horses belonging to a couple of suckers [citizens of Illinois]":

"They intend to steal sum gal on the road," whispered one sucker to his friend.

"Well, they've got cussed poor taste, fur I'll swar that aint anythin' on this yeur road to the bluff wuth shucks, 'cept Nancy Birch, and her temper would tarn the stomic of the d———l."

The second, "Yaller Pledges," appears to be set in central Missouri near the Osage River:

"'The nasty dog,' ses Sally, 'does he think I'm agoin to nuss any of his yaller pledges—ef them thar is all he's got to offer, he aint wuth shucks; and if you don't lick him fur his onmannerly note, you aint wuth **shucks, neither.'"

(This story turns on a fight between two suitors for Sally Spellman's affections. One—a man from Louisiana—makes the mistake of offering, in a note to her, "to bring a pledge of affection from the sunny south, to bind our openin' loves." Evidently a "yaller pledge" was a slang term in Missouri for a mixed-race child fathered on a black slave woman by a white man.)

Major Jones's Courtship is an invention of William Thompson titled Major Jones's Courtship: Detailed, With Other Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures, in a Series of Letters, and set in the town of Pineville, Georgia. The book was was in a twelfth edition by 1852, and in that edition the "cow" is a cur and "schucks" is spelled shucks:

Cousin Pete was long, with two hound pups, and Tom Stallins had three or four hounds, and one grate big yaller cur, what wasn't worth shucks to trail, but was bomination to fight. Ben Biers had more dogs than you could shake a stick at ; and sich another hellabaloo as they all made! why one couldn't hear himself think for 'em.

One other early occurrence of "worth shucks" appears in Thomas Thorpe, The Taylor Anecdote Book: Anecdotes and Letters of Zachary Taylor (1848) and involves another Missourian, this time a recruit joining the Army of the West in St. Louis (presumably in 1846, just prior to the start of hostilities in the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848):

The colonel [Kearny, later a general in the war] tried to look grave at this familiarity [being greeted warmly, slapped on the shoulder, and invited to have a drink by ten new recruits], but it was done by those who were so evidently unconscious of any breach of etiquette, that he was forced to laugh, and humored them by taking a glass of wine with them at the bar—the tall boy [from Missouri] telling him at the same time, that his drink "warn't worth shucks, and only fit for wimen."—"Why in thunder," cried another, "don't you go the corn-juice, general, it's the only stuff for a military feller to travel on?"

'Wouldn't hold shucks' and 'whipped into shucks'

That shucks wasn't widely throughout the United States in the 1830s to refer to natural coverings on ears of Indian corn is clear from this in-text occurrence and explanatory footnote in "Buck Horn Tavern, a Scene in the West," in The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine (January 1834):

—I heard something which sounded like the rustling of shucks, and in a few minutes after every thing was as quiet as the wild woods—

'Shucks,' the husk of corn.

The scene takes place in western Tennessee, which gives you a sense of how geographical notions of "the West" have changed over the past two centuries.

A Google Books search finds to other early idiomatic phrases that include the word shucks. From T. Egerton Brown, Trial of Judge Wilkinson, Dr. Wilkinson, and Mr. Murdaugh, on Indictments for the Murder of John Rothwell and Alexander H. Meeks, in an Affray Which Occurred at the Galt House, Louisville, Ky., on the 15th of December, 1838 (1839):

They had gone, it seems, too, in sufficient numbers to authorize the classical boast of Mr. Johnson, "that if they (meaning the Mississippians) came down their hides would'nt hold shucks."

And from Thomas Mayne Reid, The Scalp Hunters, in The Athenæum (July 19, 1851):

It required all the strength of nerve which the trapper possessed to conceal his chagrin. Without saying a word, he commenced wiping out his gun with that stoical calmness peculiar to men of his calling. I observed that he proceeded to load with more than usual care. It was evident that he would not rest satisfied with the trial already made, but would either beat the “Injun,” or be himself “whipped into shucks.” So he declared in a muttered speech to his comrades.


“Billee’s right, Cap. If them Injuns must be fit—its got to be did whur thur’s rocks or timmer. They’d whip us to shucks on the parairer. That’s settled. Wal; thur’s two things: they’ll eyther come at us—if so be, yander’s our ground”—here the speaker pointed to a spur of the Mimbres—“or we’ll be obleeged to foller them. If so be, we can do it as easy as fallin off a log. They ain’t over leg-free.”

I'm not sure what to make of the phrase "wouldn't hold shucks," though it's tempting to see it as suggesting "would be so full of holes that they couldn't be used to carry shucks in." The phrase "whipped to [or into] shucks" seems more likely to refer metaphorically to being beaten until nothing was left but the husk or shell. In any event, Google Books finds only one instance of each of these expressions during the period 1800–1870, whereas "not worth shucks" receives considerable use during the same period.

Another interesting development is the use of shucks in the South during the late stages of the Civil War to refer to Confederate money. From The New Eclectic Magazine, volume 7 (1870) [combined snippets]:

The jokes in regard to the Confederate currency are numerous and somewhat biting; the terms few, but significant. The notes which at the outset were dignified under the title of "bluebacks," eventually came to be known as "shucks"—"Confed-shucks," quasi "corn-shucks," sufficiently significant of their evil repute as a circulating medium.

'Tom Sawyer' and the emergence of stand-alone 'shucks'

The earliest Google Books match for "Shucks" as a stand-alone exclamation is in Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876), where it appears nine times, usually by itself though once as part of the longer phrase "ain't shucks":





..."I been to the circus three or four times—lots of times. Church ain't shucks to a circus. There's things going on at a circus all the time. I'm going to be a clown in a circus when I grow up."


"O, shucks! Baby! You do want to see your mother, I reckon."


"What a curious kind of a fool a girl is. Never been licked in school! Shucks, what's a licking! That's just like a girl—they're so thin-skinned and chicken-hearted. ..."


"Shucks, I only meant you'd see 'em—not hopping, of course—what do thy want to hop for?—but I mean you'd just see 'em—scattered around, you know, in a kind of a general way. Like the old hump-back Richard."


"Shucks, witches ain't got no power in the daytime."




"Shucks, what do you want to slope for?"

Twain was born in 1835 and grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, which is about 100 miles northwest of St Louis. It seems probable that he was familiar with the expression "not worth shucks" from his earliest childhood.


It seems likely that the slang term shucks had its origin in the idiomatic phrase "not worth shucks" (or "ain't worth shucks")—perhaps influenced by other idiomatic references to shucks as worthless husks—from the first half of the nineteenth century, in the U.S. South and Midwest. The phrase "not worth shucks" had roughly the sense "not worth so much as the outer shell of a walnut or the outer husk of an ear of corn." Shucks as a stand-alone expression first appears in Google Books search results in Mark Twain's hugely popular novel Tom Sawyer, published in 1876.

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I have a pet theory that this expression entered the American vernacular via Swedish:


There are a few other Americanisms that are reminiscent of Swedish in both sound and usage, and of course there was a mass migration of Swedes to the American mid-west around the turn of the last century.

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Why in the world would an English expression with this meaning come from a Swedish word that means ‘cause/reason’? And what would the justification be for only taking one half of the Swedish expression, reanalysing it as two words (for no reason), and then also pluralising one of those two resulting words? This pet theory is very far-fetched, almost Goropian. – Janus Bahs Jacquet Aug 15 '14 at 4:41

protected by tchrist Aug 24 '15 at 21:12


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