Etymology Unknown. In use since about 1800. Adjective more than one can shake a stick at (comparative yet more, superlative the most) occurring in abundance; of a large quantity; many Any English High Street has more Indian Restaurants than you can shake a stick at. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/more_than_one_can_shake_a_stick_at More than you can shake a stick at: It is found in The Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Journal in 1818: "We have in Lancaster as many Taverns as you can shake a stick at." The sense then, as now, was "a lot" or "too many to count." Shaking a stick at someone has long been considered, for good reason, a threatening gesture. There is a possibility that "more than you can shake a stick at" first arose in the context of warfare or smaller-scale hostilities, perhaps describing an overwhelmingly superior opposing force (e.g., "More Redcoats than you could shake a stick at."). Another possibility is the stick in question was shaken in the process of counting great numbers of something, perhaps used as a pointer while doing a head count of a herd of sheep or cattle. Thus, "more than you can shake a stick at" would simply mean, figuratively, "you could wave your counting stick until your arm falls off, and you still wouldn't reach the end." http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/474.html more than one can shake a stick at: A large quantity, more than one can count, as in Our town has more banks than you can shake a stick at. This idiom presumably refers to brandishing a stick as a weapon, but the precise allusion is unclear. [Colloquial; c. 1800] http://www.answers.com/topic/more-than-one-can-shake-a-stick-at Its recorded history began — at least, so far as the Oxford English Dictionary knows — in the issue of the Lancaster Journal of Pennsylvania dated 5 August 1818: “We have in Lancaster as many Taverns as you can shake a stick at”. Another early example is from Davy Crockett’s Tour to the North and Down East of 1835: “This was a temperance house, and there was nothing to treat a friend that was worth shaking a stick at”. A little later, in A Book of Vagaries by James K Paulding of 1868, this appears: “The roistering barbecue fellow swore he was equal to any man you could shake a stick at”. The modern use of the phrase always exists as part of the extended and fixed phrase “more ... than you can shake a stick at”, meaning an abundance, plenty. The phrase without the “more than” element is rather older, but not by much. Shaking a stick at somebody, of course, is a threatening gesture, or at least one of defiance. So to say that you have shaken a stick at somebody is to suggest that person is an opponent, perhaps a worthy one. The sense in the second and third quotations above seem to fit this idea: “nothing worth shaking a stick at” means nothing of value; “equal to any man you could shake a stick at” means that the speaker is equal to any man of consequence. Where it comes from can only be conjecture. One possibility that has been put forward is that it derives from the counting of farm animals, which one might do by pointing one’s stick at each in turn. So having more than one can shake one’s stick at, or tally, would imply a great number. This doesn’t fit the early examples, though, which don’t have any idea of counting about them. Another idea is that it comes from battle, in which one might shake a stick at one’s vanquished enemy. This could possibly have led into the early usages. Following publication of this piece in the World Wide Words newsletter, Suzan Hendren and Sherwin Cogan suggested that it might have come from the Native American practice of counting coup, in which merit was gained by touching a vanquished enemy in battle. In that case, “too many to shake a stick at” might indicate a surplus of fallen enemies, and “not worth shaking a stick at” would equate a person with “an enemy who is so cowardly or worthless that there is no merit to be gained from counting coup on him”, as Sherwin Cogan put it. http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-sha2.htm This 19th-century Americanism now means "an abundance"; but its original meaning is unclear. Suggestions have included "more than one can count" (OED, AHD3), "more than one can threaten" (Charles Earle Funk), and "more than one can believe" (Dictionary of American English). No one of these seems easy to reconcile with all the following citations: "We have in Lancaster as many taverns as you can shake a stick at." (1818) "This was a temperance house, and there was nothing to treat a friend to that was worth shaking a stick at." (David Crockett, "Tour to the North and Down East", 1835) "Our queen snake was [...] retiring, attended by more of her subjects than we even dared to shake a stick at." (1843) "I have never sot eyes on anything that could shake a stick at that." (= "set eyes on anything that could compare with that", 1843) "[...] Uncle Sam [...] has more acres than you can throw a stick at." (1851) "She got onto the whappiest, biggest, rustiest yaller moccasin that ever you shuck er stick at." (1851) A connection with the British expression "hold (the) sticks with", meaning "compete on equal terms with" and attested since 1817, is not impossible. OED staff told me: "The US usages in DAE do appear to have a different sense to that given in OED. [...] All the modern examples I've found on our databases conform to OED's definition so I think this is still the most common usage." Merriam-Webster staff opined that the "count" interpretation "works as well for 'as many as you can shake a stick at' [...] if you take it to mean that there is no limit to how many of the objects in question one could shake one's stick at. [...] We would consider 'A can't shake a stick at B' a different expression entirely, with a meaning similar to 'A can't hold a candle to B' [...]." In their 1897 work "A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant", Albert Barrere and Charles Leland suggested that Dutch immigrants originated the expression using the Dutch word "schok" = "to shake or hit." http://stason.org/TULARC/languages/english-usage/160-more-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at-Phrase-origins-a.html http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxmoreth.html

cordovan jelly twists and collegiate cofee, is the due aplomb of our time!!!