Shinola

This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Shinola is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:

Related Sponsors

BM Pharmacy Generic pharmaceuticals at unbeatable prices. Insomnia, men's health, hair health, pain control. bmpharmacy.com
Online Pharmacy Carisoprodol, tadalafil, sildenafil, vardenafil and more... xlpharmacy.com
MedBasket.com Discreet. Inexpensive. Fast shipping. Great selection. What more can we say? medbasket.com
Frugalmed 2000 reasons to shop with us first. frugalmed.com
Ads by Tiva

This article is about a brand of shoe polish. For other meanings, see Shinola (disambiguation).
A tin of Shinola.
 This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2008)

Shinola is a brand of wax shoe polish that was available in the early- to mid-20th century. The original trademark was filed in 1929 by 2-in-1 Shinola-Bixby Corporation, New Jersey.12

Contents

"You don't know shit from Shinola."

Shinola was immortalized in colloquial English by the phrase You don't (or he/she doesn't) know shit from Shinola which first became widely popular during World War II.citation needed Aside from being an amusing bit of alliteration, the phrase implies that the person being referred to is stupid or woefully ignorant.citation needed Shit and Shinola, while superficially similar in appearance, are entirely distinct in their function; only one is good for polishing shoes, and anyone who fails to distinguish one from the other must be ignorant or of low acuity. Similar expressions include doesn't know his ass from his elbow or Sir Henry Wood's doesn't know his brass from his woodwind.

Further references in popular culture

 Lists of miscellaneous information should be avoided. Please relocate any relevant information into appropriate sections or articles. (November 2008)
  • More than one band has been named Shinola in reference to the shoe polish.citation needed
  • In the 1992 film Basic Instinct, the phrase is used.
  • On an episode of the black USA TV series Good Times, Florida stated, jokingly, "You don't know the difference between shellac and Shinola".
  • In the 1979 Steve Martin film The Jerk, Navin Johnson (Martin) is instructed in the difference between Shit and Shinola by his father (Richard Ward).
  • The phrase "You don't know shit from Shinola" was also used in James McBride's The Color of Water by the character "Chicken Man" when he is speaking to James (McBride 149).
  • An episode of The Golden Girls, entitled "The Case of the Libertine Belle," makes a reference to the phrase. Rose claims that in her hometown, she was nicknamed the "Sherlock Holmes of St. Olaf." Dorothy promptly asks, "Figured out which one was Shinola, did you, Rose?", to which Rose replies, "The hard way."
  • In 2004, Madvillain, an American Hip Hop duo released the song "Figaro," which contains the lyrics "Dead bent, but don't know their neck shine from Shinola."
  • Umberto Eco uses the phrase based on the traditional usage with some variation in his novel Foucault's Pendulum. One of his main characters, Beblo, writes in a computer file, "From shit, thus, I extract pure Shinola," referencing the computer's capability to quickly and efficiently turn a messy or unimpressive file into a masterpiece, as opposed to the slower use of a pen.
  • Dolly Parton's song titled Shinola contains the phrase "You don't know love from Shinola". In some performances, Parton ends the song with the phrase "You don't know love from shoe polish".citation needed
  • In episode 4.8 of Night Court, "Contempt of Courting", after an extensive and gratuitous flow of compliments from Dan Fielding, Judge Gardner (substituting for vacationing Judge Stone) asks Mac "Is he always such a bootlicker?", and Mac replies "Shinola's Dan's favorite flavor."
  • The "...shit from Shinola" phrase is comically played on in the film Raising Arizona.
  • The phrase is used widely throughout many of Steven King's novels.
  • kgb, the New York-based directory and information assistance company, aired a TV commercial that directly refers to Shinola. In the commercial, a woman is shown two pictures (which are facing away from the camera) and she is asked, "Which is which?" To which she responds, "The one on the right is Shinola."

References

  1. ^ [1]USPTO Trademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval: Trademark Serial Number 71292186
  2. ^ [2] USPTO Trademark Applications and Registrations Retrieval: Trademark Serial Number 71298294

External links

This product article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Wikipedia content modification information:

  • This page was last modified on 8 January 2009, at 00:27.

Wikipedia Authorship and Review

Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.

Wikipedia Usage Guidelines

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Shinola".

The URL for this specific entry is:

All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.