no-count

no-count

1. adjective Totally worthless; lazy, untrustworthy, or incorrigible; good-for-nothing. (Short for "no-account.") That no-count son-in-law of mine has gotten himself arrested for public drunkenness again. That's the third time in as many months!
2. noun A worthless, lazy, or incorrigible person; a ne'er-do-well. It grieves me each time my son comes home with a new no-count of a boyfriend, but it's not for me to choose whom he dates.
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • put the bee on (someone)
  • put the bite on
  • put the bite on (one)
  • put the bite on someone
  • put the touch on (one)
  • put the arm on
  • put the arm on (one)
  • put the arm on someone
  • put the arm/bite on somebody
  • bulletproof
References in periodicals archive
Whoever controls the God-concept can stratify humanness, and since the Ancient Hebrews know the "Divine Plan" ("God sent somebody especially to tell them about it"), they qualify as the Chosen People, full-fledged humans who have the authority and right to rule and govern the "lesser breeds." By contrast, the Canaanites lack knowledge of the "Divine Plan" ("their evil ways would not let them see"), and as a consequence they are "no-count rascals," which God "never did think much of, anyway."
After outlining how twentieth-century political leaders have appropriated Moses' theocratic government and specified how those leaders have cast the Jews into the role of Canaanites--the "no-count rascals" of the text--Hurston describes the situation of Jews in a way that resembles the situation of blacks: "We have no written side of the people other than the direct testimony of their behavior recorded by their oppressors.
He'd impressed director Terence Malick, not with his CV (at that point just no-count roles in G I Jane, The Rock and Wyatt Earp plus a jeans modelling gig for Gap) but his soulfulness.
Tripping from bar to banquette to bar, killing the seconds of a sweaty afternoon when the river breeze will not genuflect at the cathedral, when the memories of old Count No-Count shimmer in the aroma of Dixie-45, Regal, Jax, and Tennessee's fate-burnt bourbon across the square like a Puritan epiphany, when a second-line of jazz fingers their hearts like hands exploring private spaces in the cool of dawn, they fear their secret lives will be drawn and quartered by the moralities of the little theatre, paraded in off-beat mardi gras, never again to know the masque of smoked shadows, the forbidden bonded in hard liquor and blooming like a rose tattoo under the skin, the iron kiss of suddenness breaking the mouth of surprise.
Like that poor woman ain't got troubles of her own with that aggravatin, no-count husband of hers, and them eight younguns that act like they gone be just like him."
This ethical orientation is reflected in her belief that she is "an upright and Christian woman, burdened with a no-count man, whom God wanted her to punish" (37),(3) and she rationalizes that her antipathy toward Cholly is sanctified by her God, for "Christ the Judge" demands that she make her husband pay for his transgression.
Although not as important in the literary reconstruction of spoken dialect as grammar, such lexical items as killer-diller, killer, hussie, no-count, doodly-squat, and hootchie-kootchie man were popular during that era.