bupkis

Literally, in Yiddish it means "beans". However, beans was a term used to describe goat droppings, as goat shit looks like beans.

So bupkis or bupkes is a common slang for, 'of no value". That is what the slang means. The reason for that is above. It does not literally mean "goat shit". It means "beans".

I worked my ass off on this project and got exactly bupkis for my troubles.

by linguistication November 01, 2015