any of numerous large marine snails, esp an the European edible one: Buccinum undatum and others
not fit to run a whelk stall
incapable of managing the simplest task or enterprise
[first used by the British socialist politician John Burns (1858–1943) in a speech in January 1894 in which he referred to the Social-Democratic Federation as ‘men who fancy they are Admirable Crichtons … but who have not got sufficient brains to run a whelk stall’. The whelk stall was probably symbolic of work regarded as leisurely and undemanding][Old English weoloc]