English Language & Usage Asked on January 5, 2021
In The Fortune Cookie (1966) Walter Matthau’s character, a cunning lawyer, says:
What’s the matter? You feel sorry for insurance companies? They got so much money they don’t know what to do with it. They’ve run out of storage space–they have to microfilm it. What’s a quarter of a million to them? They take it out of petty cash. So don’t give me with the scruples.
"Don’t give me with the scruples!" sounds very peculiar to my ear, syntactically. People say "I have no scruples against doing that." But "Don’t give me with" is a curious construct, so is "Don’t give me with the scruples." Walter Matthau had a very typical New York accent and way of speaking. I wonder if this is his idiolect or something typical of (dated?) NY dialect?
Edit: Jack Lemmon’s character later in the same movie says something similar: "Don’t give me with that torch."
I suspect this is a parallel to "make with the", which is slang for "Produce, Perform".
make with
slang: PRODUCE, PERFORM —usually used with the
Straighten up and walk … make with the feet
Another example "make with the music" = "Start the music"
Hence "don't give with the scruples" = "don't express your moral doubts to me".
Answered by Anton on January 5, 2021
I think it could be simply idiosyncratic speech modelled on "Don't give me that scruples nonsense/trash/crap/…!".
Answered by LPH on January 5, 2021
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