Robin Sax "blows it" on Fox! Claims Sandusky "shot his wad."

[skip fox]

Robin Sax said Jerry Sandusky was right not to have taken the stand since he had already proclaimed his innocence:

"He should not take the stand," Sax said. "He’s already proclaimed his innocence, he had his shot, he shot his wad, and he did a terrible job, and better not be placed in the position to have to explain it."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/19/robin-sax-fox-analyst-jerry-sandusky_n_1609775.html?utm_hp_ref=media

But to be completely fair (not just Fox News "fair&quot I have investigated the phrase earlier and found it it doesn't come from the sexual arena but from dicing: shooting one's entire roll of cash on a roll of the dice.


(Likewise "money shot" comes not from the porn industry but from the film industry. A "money shot" is what the director calls the most expensive--like a car chase--and which also brings the most money into the theater.)

[cthulu2016]

1. There may be an even earlier derivation

I had heard the saying arose from the cotton wad used to hold in the gunpowder in muskets

[skip fox]

2. I had heard that one as well and it makes good sense, especially

if shooting a "wad" means a blank or defective load.

My information comes from Harold Wentworth's Dictionary of American Slang (1967). The only one to have more authority would have been Lighter's Random House Dictionary of American Slang but he never was allowed to complete the third volume, where the "s's" would have been.

[cthulu2016]

3. If you forgot to put in the bullet...

after the gunpowder and the cotton wad then you would just be shooting a cotton ball at the enemy. So that sense would mean a futile and/or incompetent.

The other sense, of exhausting your resources, may have developed latter when a bankroll became a wad.

And then the ejaculation sense of it may have also developed erroneously. John Holmes was "Johny Wadd" because of the size of the wad in his pants, with "wad" being equivalent to bulge and package.

But the existence of the phrase "shot his wad" would have lead to conflation of wad (pants bulge) and ejaculation.


Each generation will hear expressions used and try to make sense of them in the context of their own environment, which is a cool process.

People today often say (erroneously) "taking a different tact." But sailing is obsolete, so "tacking" is not a common concept. When someones here's the expression they make whatever sense of it they can, and "tact" sounds like tactic.

And, ironically, the metaphor of changing tack is not used to mean a change in physical direction, but a change in approach... in strategy or tactic. So though "taking a different tact" is a pet peeve of mine, I certainly understand how it came to be.

[skip fox]

5. Nicely considered. Any dictionary support? I'd heard it before from students.

So it may be factual, but have not seen evidence of it being picked up by a lexicographer.

[cthulu2016]

8. Heck no!

My perverse approach to the internet is the fun of arguing from whatever we know, and can reason from what we know. Looking stuff up spoils it.

[panader0]

4. I had a vasectomy

shooting blanks here.........

[Initech]

6. Extremely poor choice of words there.

[skip fox]

7. Yes, no matter where it comes from, I agree since the sexual context has overshadowed

al others.

[Initech]

9. Yeah that's definitely not the right context for that phrase.