A nineteenth-century Polish tinker. A man seated on a chair, holding a pot between his legs and tools in his hands. Various tools and materials are strewn about his feet.
20 June 2022
The phrase to not give a tinker’s damn means to not care about something or to ascribe little or no worth to it. While most English speakers today know what the phrase means, especially when heard in context, many do not know what a tinker is or why it is associated with swearing and profanity. Furthermore, a desire not to utter a profanity has caused some to respell the final word as dam, sometimes inventing false explanations for doing so along the way.
A tinker is someone who mends pots, pans, and other household utensils, especially one who is itinerant, with no fixed place of business. Why a member of this profession is called a tinker is unknown. The word may come from tin, the material tinkers often work with, but in that case the addition of the /k/ is unexplained. More likely, it is an echoic word, coming from the sound that tinkers make when working.
Regardless of where the word comes from, it is first recorded in the twelfth century as a surname, presumably of someone of that profession. In 1145, a Robert le Tinker of Stokes was recorded in court document as being the witness to a murder, but as Robert and others, did not seize the murderer, who was still at large, they were fined 100 shillings. And an Editha le Tynekere is mentioned in a tax roll from c.1265. Her assessment was two pence, the lowest listed on the roll. This one is especially noteworthy as it is presumably a reference to a tradeswoman. There are other extant medieval mentions of people with the surname Tinker.
The word also appears in William Langland’s c.1400 poem Piers Plowman. It comes in a long list of tradespeople toward the end of the poem’s prologue:
Barons and Burgeises and bonde-men als
I seiȝ in þis assemblee as ye shul here after
Baksteres and Brewesteres and Bochiers manye
Wollen webbesters and weueres of lynnen
Taillours and Tynkers and Tollers in Markettes
Masons and Mynours and many oþere craftes
Of alle kynne lybbynge laborers lopen forþ somme
As dykeres and delueres þat doon hire dedes ille
And dryueþ forþ þe longe day with Dieu saue dame Emme
Cokes and hire knaues cryden hote pies hote
Goode gees and grys gowe go we dyne gowe go we(Barons and burgesses and bondmen also
I saw in this assembly as you shall hear later.
Bakers and brewers and butchers a-many,
Woollen-websters and weavers of linen,
Tailors and tinkers and toll-collectors in markets,
Masons and miners and many other crafts.
Of all kinds of living labourers there stood forth some;
Ditch-diggers and delvers that do their work ill
And carry on all the day singing “God save you, Lady Emma!”
Cooks and their knaves cried “Pies, hot pies!
Good goose and pork! Come, dine! Come, dine!”)
The association of tinkers with swearing and foul language is in place by the early seventeenth century. Presumably, tinkers were a rough lot, given to salty language. Randle Cotgrave makes mention of the phrase swear like a tinker in two entries in his 1611 French-English dictionary:
Chartier: m. A Carter, Carreman; Waine-man, Waggonman. Il iure comme vn chartier. He sweares like a Carter; (we say, like a Tinker.)
And:
Iurer. To sweare, depose, take an oath, rap out an oath.
Iurer és mains d'autruy. (The old fashion of swearing) Looke Main.
Il iure comme vn Abbé; chartier; gentilhomme; prelat. Like a Tinker, say we.
And later that century we see the phrase itself in a 1687 translation of Cervantes’s Don Quixote:
The Gypsie Asturian, seeing him coming in Cholerick haste, fled for shelter into Sancho’s Kennel, who lay snoring like a Tapster, and there hid her self under his Coverlet, truss’d up as round as an Egg. Presently the Master entring, and swearing like a Tinker, Where's this damn'd Whore, cry'd he? for I'm sure 'tis her doing. At the same time Sancho awaking, and feeling an unusual weight that almost over-laid him, which he believ’d to be the Night-Mare, laid about him with his Fists, and pummell’d Maritornes so severely, that at last having lost all her Patience, and forgetting the Danger she was in, she return’d him his Thumps with such a plentiful Interest, that Sancho's Welch Blood being mov’d, he bussl’d up in his Bed, and catching hold of Maritornes, began the most pleasant Skirmish in the VVorld: For the Carrier seeing his Mistress so abus’d, cuff’d Sancho; Sancho maul’d the Maid; the Maid be-labour’d the Squire, in return of his Kindnesses; and the Inn-keeper paid off his Servant; following their Blows so fast, as if they had been afraid of losing time.
The noun phrase tinker’s curse, denoting something that is worthless, is in place by the early nineteenth century. The law of supply and demand would rule that since swear words from a tinker were overly abundant, they consequently wouldn’t be worth much. This passage is from D.W. Paynter’s 1813 novel The History and Adventures of Godfrey Ranger, in which the protagonist encounters a former lover who has become a beggar and prostitute and is in a pitiable state:
Whilst I was lifting her off the steps, the tongues of the people were extremely active.
“Devil take me,” cried one, “but he’s got an armful of joy!” “A pretty gentleman, icod!” cried another. “He’s woundily fond of a job!” cried a third. “I’m thinking he’ll have to wash his paws well after it!” bawled a fourth. “Pugh, how you talk, man,” cried a fifth, “fellows in fine coats will do dirtier work than this, when they are put to their shifts.” [“]Will they, by G—!” cried a sixth, “then they a’n’t worth a pedlar’s curse!” “You mean a tinker’s curse, friend,” shouted a seventh. “You may all think or mean what you choose,” cried an eighth; “but I’ll be d—n’d, and that’s plain English, I think, if I wouldn’t sooner empty fifty jakes’, than touch the finger-nails of such a stinking b—h!”
And we have this from the Saratoga Journal of 11 June 1817, showing that the phrase was also current in North America. Here the topic is the unstable nature of paper currency in that era:
The editor of the Zanesville (Ohio) paper, in speaking of the bank bills in that quarter, remarks, that he does not know how they are situated in other quarters with regard to that kind of money; but in that vicinity, “He was best off who had the least of it”—that “some of it was not worth a tinker’s curse,” &c.
And we finally see the now-familiar phrase tinker’s damn in the Scribbler, a Montreal paper, from 20 April 1826:
I don’t care a tinker’s damn, by gosh; he can only laugh at me, but can’t say any thing so very bad of me.
There have also been attempts to clean up the phrase by calling it a tinker’s dam and avoiding repeating the swear word. Engineer and patent lawyer Edward H. Knight came up with this convoluted, and obviously false, explanation for the phrase in his 1876 Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary:
Tink´er’s-dam. A wall of dough raised around a place which a plumber desires to flood with a coat of solder. The material can be but once used; being consequently thrown away as worthless, it has passed into a proverb, usually involving the wrong spelling of the otherwise innocent word “dam.”
Others would have the dam being a reference to the tinker’s horse, presumably one that was not worth very much. Of course, this overlooks the fact that dam, while it is used in records of equine bloodlines, does not mean horse, but rather means mother.
But the lexical evidence is clear, the word is damn. Although appearances of tinker’s dam do not necessarily mean the writers believed these incorrect conjectures. The writers, especially nineteenth-century ones, may have just been trying to avoid the impolite spelling.
Sources:
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de. The History of the Most Renowned Don Quixote of Mancha and His Trusty Squire Sancho Pancha. J.P., trans. London: Thomas Hodgkin, 1687, 1.3.2, 69. Early English Books Online.
Chadwick-Healey, Charles E.H., ed. Somersetshire Pleas. London: Harrison and Sons, 1897, 304. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Cotgrave, Randle. A Dictionarie of the French and English Tongues. London: Adam Islip, 1611. Early English Books Online.
Knight, Edward H. Knight’s American Mechanical Dictionary, vol. 3 of 3. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1876, 2575, s.v. Tinker’s-dam. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Langland, William. Piers Plowman (B text). Thorlac Turville-Petre and Hoyt N. Duggan, eds. Prologue, lines 217–27. Piers Plowman Electronic Archive. Cambridge, Trinity College MS B.15.17.
Letter, 8 March 1826. The Scribbler (Montreal), 20 April 1826. 248. Gale Primary Sources: American Historical Periodicals from the American Antiquarian Society.
Lexicons of Early Modern English, 2021.
Middle English Dictionary, 2019, s.v. tinker(e, n.
Oxford English Dictionary, third edition, March 2020, s.v. tinker, n.1.
Paynter, David William. The History and Adventures of Godfrey Ranger, vol. 2 of 3. Manchester: R.W. Dean, 1813, 143. Google Books.
Saratoga Journal (Ballston Spa, New York). 11 June 1817, 2. Readex: America’s Historical Newspapers.
Sixth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part 1: Report and Appendix. London: George Edward Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1877, 578. HathiTrust Digital Archive.
Tréguer, Pascal. “Meaning and Origin of ‘Not to Give a Tinker’s Damn.’” Wordhistories.net. 30 March 2017.
Image credit: Ignacy Krieger, nineteenth century. Public domain image.