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Shinola is a brand of wax shoe polish available in the early- to mid-20th century. Its immortality in colloquial English comes from its being a dark, sticky, semisolid substance with a faint resemblence to human feces. The colloquialism that brought, perhaps unwanted, name recognition to the brand is: "[He] doesn't know shit from Shinola."
Implied is that shit and Shinola, while superficially similar, are quite different in value when applied to shoes or carelessly stepped in. One who doesn't know one from the other is therefore critically unwise, or of substandard mental ability. The phrase is most famously uttered in the 1979 Carl Reiner film "The Jerk," starring Steve Martin.
Similar meaning can be found in the expression, "He doesn't know his ass from his elbow" or the variant, "He doesn't know his ass from a hole in the wall."
More recently a London-based film directing collective have adopted the name, with a spelling change: "Shynola." They have made music videos for the likes of "Radiohead," "Beck," "Blur" and "Queens of the Stone Age."
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