damn all
English
[edit]Pronoun
[edit]- (informal, vulgar) Nothing (not any thing: no thing).
- 1958, Anthony Burgess, The Enemy in the Blanket (The Malayan Trilogy), published 1972, page 298:
- "The rice ration's down to nearly damn-all in the kampongs, but we keep finding dumps of grub in the forest."
- 1976, L. P. Davies, Possession, The Crime Club, →ISBN, page 112:
- And that's just to let you see we don't spend all our time sitting round on our arses doing damn all.
- 1980 March 3, Antony Jay, Jonathan Lynn, “The Official Visit”, in Yes, Minister, season 1, episode 2, spoken by Humphrey Appleby and Frederick Stewart (Nigel Hawthorne and John Savident):
- Humphrey Appleby: Well, isn't that rather serious? I mean Buranda's a friendly African country with a Commonwealth connection.
Frederick Stewart: Our information is it's likely to be turned into a hostile LDC with a Cuban connection.
Humphrey Appleby: What will the Government do about it?
Frederick Stewart: The same as they always do:
Both: damn all! (laugh track)