Talk:tinker's damn

Dam worth a damn

I'll not start any edit wars on the question of the folk etymology of "tinker's dam" vs "tinker's damn" (cf similarly "worth a dam") but the claim that either one or the other is "folk etymology" is established by the evidence is not cogent.

• Though it is perfectly possible that "curse", "cuss", or "damn" predate "dam" in print or report, one cannot be confident that all sources have been found, or even preserved. In fact, the earliest sources are the likeliest to have been lost.
• Those that originally were gleaned from (ultimately oral) report do not thereby become lexicographically indisputable; all that such a report means is that someone at some time asserted that such was the usage, and the source in his turn might well have based his confidence on his own misunderstanding of what he had heard from an earlier user.
• It remains perfectly possible that "dam" was coined independently (possibly among tinkers, rather than witnesses, historians or writers), whether among those that knew of the other usage or not and whether preceding it or not. It might have become an "in" usage among artisans for example. As such it readily would have been misinterpreted by the laity who never had heard of a "tinker's dam" (again cf similarly "worth a dam" for persons of no Indian experience).
• Even if this once was folk etymology, its adoption from authoritative, or at least influential, sources, by people who prefer one usage rather than the other, is just as valid and defensible as any other origin.
• Such usage might well justify terms such as "folk etymology" but NOT claims that such etymology (let alone the usage) is to be deprecated in terms such as: "However, this is just polish added to an old phrase, as not worth a damn predates the use of tinker's damn." As a personal assertion that is simple illogic; no better than any other folk etymology. Instead something like: 'However, available evidence does not support this; variations on "not worth a damn" predate expressions such as "not worth a tinker's damn" (or "tinker's dam" or "tinker's cuss")' would be a more defensible statement. JonRichfield (talk) 16:06, 6 March 2015 (UTC)

Further to this I have found a source from "tinker's damn" form 1823. The Rambler's Magazine: Or, Fashionable Emporium of Polite Literature ...‎^[1], Benbow, 1823, page 216

Quotation included in the page, but I have not updated the entymology text.

Rich Farmbrough, 00:53, 31 December 2020 (UTC).