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Anonymous

Feb 13, 2025

What does 'no ticky, no shirty' mean?

What does "no ticky, no shirty" mean? Thank you in advance for your help!

1 Answers

Best Answer
A
Anonymous

Feb 13, 2025

The ungrammatical phrase "no tickee no shirtee," also known as "no tickee no washee," speaks to a Chinese laundryman's power in a laundry transaction, where the Chinese laundryman refuses to relinquish freshly laundered shirts to a white man who has innocently and unintentionally lost his claim ticket.

The phrase is a fine example of a linguistic phenomenon: when people learn a new language, they often layer their new vocabulary over the grammatical structure of their native language. For instance, the Mandarin Chinese phrase ”mei(2) pian(3) yi(1) mei(2) chun(3) yi(1)” literally means “no ticket, no shirt”.

Of interest, Merriam-Webster recently announced that it has added more than 1,000 new words to its catalog, drawing from pop culture, science, foreign languages, sports, medicine, and more. For a list of some of the new additions, see Business Insider.

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