I was reading a short story when I stumbled across the following sentence.
"[H]e overheard his dad say it wasn’t worth its price in shit."
I was a bit surprised with the negation. I'm used to the following use of the phrase:
"It is worth its price in shit."
I understand it like: "The price you pay for it is fairly low compared to its value." But in the sentence from the story, I get a bit confused. Should it be considered like double negation? The father is not happy with the price that he wants to stick in a "swear-word" somewhere in the sentence, no matter what... Or am I missing something subtle here?
I couldn't find the meaning of "in shit" via Google. The only idiom I could find is "happier than a pig in shit", which obviously has nothing to do with the use I quoted.