no great shakes
Proposed by a contributor, not yet supported by evidence.
Meaning · English
Nothing special or impressive
Literally: no great shakes of something
Where it’s used:
Used
Widespread English
Examples
At school I was no great shakes at it, or anything.
It is very simply made and no great shakes as a piece of cinema.
British National Corpus sentence via the MAGPIE corpus (CC BY 4.0, retrieved 2026-07-30)
Sources & notes
Listed in Wiktionary’s “English idioms” category (retrieved 2026-07-29); definition pending editorial review. Definition drafted by AI (@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast) and auto-approved by rule on 2026-07-31; pending editor spot-check.
Common questions
What does “no great shakes” mean?
Nothing special or impressive Literally: no great shakes of something
Is “no great shakes” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.