What does the phrase mean "shake a stick at?"

[Blondie]

I've heard it numerous times, but could never figure out what people mean when they say (example) "I have more tomatoes than I can shake a stick at!"

Why are we shaking sticks at anything? To keep them back, to make them go away, is the stick really a magic wand of sorts?

 

[Bob Slydell]

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. An intriguing idea, but there’s no evidence that I know of.

What can I say? I'm bored.

 

[Blondie]

 

[phamton]

Dear Word Detective: I've looked in more books then you can shake a stick at, and I can't find the origin of the phrase "more than you can shake a stick at." I have spent more sleepless nights then you can shake a stick at, trying to puzzle out its origins. If you could enlighten me I would be forever grateful. (Well, maybe not forever, but certainly for a few minutes.) -- Mik, via the internet.

I can't claim to have suffered through sleepless nights wondering where "more than you can shake a stick at" came from, but it certainly is a mysterious phrase. It's also fairly old. Its first recorded appearance 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."

The question, of course, is why one would be counting or measuring a crowd of something by shaking a stick at it. 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, and one that I find more likely, 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."

 

[Buckalew11]

Is there a day that goes by that one doesn't hear about someone "shaking a stick at"? Not here in TN! LOL

 

[Pop Daddy]

has anyone ever seen the movie "Attack of the killer tommatos"

 

[T16GEM]

tigger always says "stick a shake at"!!!!! It always makes me laugh in the Tigger Movie!

Thanks for the back ground info to the phrase though.