Tinkers

Wow, has it really been a whole week since Ojibwa? That little etymological gem, along with Scotoma the day before, were nothing much as posts go.  But they provoked a veritable fire storm of comments. (Thanks, all!)  So, by popular demand, I’m back at it again today with your first ever Phrase of the Day:  “Tinkers Dam.”  Or “Tinker’s Damn,” if you prefer.  <Hey, you asked for it, you got it, Kate.  Yeah, yer welcome.>

 

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Consulting The Phrase Finder, we see the meaning of “Tinker’s Dam(n)” is “something insignificant or worthless.” Quoting at length:

 

There’s some debate over whether this phrase should be ‘tinker’s dam’ – a small dam to hold solder, used by tinkers when mending pans; or ‘tinker’s damn’ – a tinker’s curse, considered of little significance because tinkers were reputed to swear habitually.

 

If we go back to 1877, in the Practical Dictionary of Mechanics, Edward Knight puts forward this definition:

 

“Tinker’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.”

 

That version of events has gone into popular folklore and many people believe it. After all, any definition written as early has 1877 has to be true doesn’t it?

 

Knight may well have been a fine mechanic but there has to be some doubt about his standing as an etymologist. There is no corroborative evidence for his speculation and he seems to have fallen foul of the curse of folk etymologists – plausibility. If an ingenious story seems to neatly fit the bill then it must be true, right?  Well, in this case it isn’t. The Victorian preference of ‘dam’ over ‘damn’ may also owe something to coyness over the use of a profanity in polite conversation…

 

The problem is that all those accounts ignore an earlier phrase – ‘a tinker’s curse’ (or cuss), which exemplified the reputation tinkers had for habitual use of profanity. This example from John Mactaggart’s The Scottish Gallovidian Encyclopedia, 1824, pre-dates Knight’s version in the popular language:

 

“A tinkler’s curse she did na care what she did think or say.”

 

So, we can forget about plumbing. The earlier phrase simply migrated the short distance from ‘curse’ to ‘damn’ to give us the proper spelling of the phrase – tinker’s damn.

 

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There you have it, etymology buffs.  If you give a dam.  Or a damn.

Whatever.

However you slice it, it’s just a throw-away phrase in either case.