"sleep a wink"), whereas others are highly versatile, such as the semantically bleached shit: I'm not paying him shit. I'm not saying shit without a lawyer In linguistics, a minimizer is a word or phrase that denotes a very small quantity which is used to reinforce negation. For example, in the sentence "I'm not paying him a red cent", red cent is a minimizer which means "I'm not paying him any money". Minimizers are usually analysed as a subclass of negative polarity items, and are often limited to negative contexts. For example, statements like "I He doesn't know jack shit about politics. He knows jack shit about politics. Other English examples in this category (which Paul Postal gives the label "SQUAT") include dick, diddley-squat, fuck-all, and shit. The same phenomenon has been observed for some vulgarisms in Catalan (e.g. una merda, "a shit"; un carall, "a penis") and Spanish (e.g. tres cojones, "three testicles"; un mojón, "a turd"). Some uses of vulgar intensifiers serve the same semantic function as minimizers, as for example in the statement, "I'm not paying him a frickin cent" (compare "I'm not paying him a red cent"). He doesn't know jack shit about politics. He knows jack shit about politics. Other English examples in this category (which Paul Postal gives the label "SQUAT") include dick, diddley-squat, fuck-all, and shit. The same phenomenon has been observed for some vulgarisms in Catalan (e.g. una merda, "a shit"; un carall, "a penis") and Spanish (e.g. tres cojones, "three testicles"; un mojón, "a turd"). Some uses of vulgar intensifiers serve the same semantic function as minimizers, as for example in the statement, "I'm not paying him a frickin cent" (compare "I'm not paying him a red cent").