where did jack of all trades come from
Jack of all trades, master of none In Elizabethan English the quasi-New Latin term Johannes factotum ("Johnny do-it-all") was sometimes used, with the same negative connotation[1] that "Jack of all trades" sometimes has today. The term was famously used by Robert Greene in his 1592 booklet Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit,[2] in which he dismissively refers to actor-turned-playwright William Shakespeare with this term, the first published mention of the writer.