Euphemisms (or synonyms) for “God”: a history

May 5, 2016 • 2:30 pm

Matthew, who is a Teacher and thus should be Appreciated, sent me a link to this tw**t:

I had no idea all of those words referred obliquely to “God.” “Gadzooks”? “By George”?

50 thoughts on “Euphemisms (or synonyms) for “God”: a history”

  1. In “Roughing It,” Mark Twain has a burlesqued meeting with Mormon prophet Joseph Smith. Smith got agitated and started swearing. Some of the oaths: “Shade of Nephi!”, “So help me, Joseph Smith,” “By the ghost of Orson Hyde.”
    As a heathen married to an observant Mormon, it’s pretty funny and I bet it was hilarious back in Twain’s day. If oaths like these were actually uttered over the years, I imagine they would become contracted as well.

    1. In the TV show 30 Rock, “Hammer of Thor!” gets used occasionally, even by the really Christian character (the NBC page, forget his name).

      Which inspired me to start using exclamations like “Pele’s magma” just to annoy the religiously privileged.

      1. Which inspired me to start using exclamations like “Pele’s magma” just to annoy the religiously privileged.

        By the Seven Meaty Balls of the Flying Spachetti Monster (Sauce Be Upon Them), that’s a good one!

    2. Ooops. I meant Twain met with Brigham Young, who evoked Joseph Smith in his blasphemy.

  2. I say good grief a lot because I have a young son and I try not to swear in front of him too much. It’s a pretty (effing) mild expletive and generally attracts little attention.

    Besides, Charlie Brown says it!

    1. Heavens to Murgatroid!
      Which is probably a reference to haemorrhoids.

  4. Thanks a lot. Now that Sister Mary Agony knows these euphemisms I’m n a real pickle.

  5. I encountered “zounds” as a contraction of”God’s wounds” reading Shakespeare in Hugh school. Sblood, too.

  6. I used to hear the phrase “by gosh and by golly.” Never knew it was redundant. Among all my friends and acquaintances who play Irish music, we use the word zook or zouk as a shortened version of bouzouki. So I guess for us “gadzooks” would mean god’s bouzouki. Zook is also used as a short form of zucchini, so….

  7. I see it includes ‘Jove’, but that is a reference to Jupiter. Darwin was fond of saying ‘By Jove!’, btw.

  8. The list doesn’t cover atheist expressions though, I don’t see “d*g” or “colander fill” in there.

  11. By Jove! Only about 30 choices in 600 years! The internet alone must have 600 a day. Here’s a couple in just 60 seconds:

    Big Daddy Shaggy

    The Obscomper

    Whoremaker

    G-boy

    Ass On Top

  12. My atheist father had no use for oblique references to God; he used the name of the “Second Person of the Holy Trinity” as a euphemism for “shit!” or “fuck!” — his habitual exclamation when something surprising occurred was to cry, “Jesus H. Christ!”

    1. Me too.

      (Except I sometimes drop the ‘H’ and replace it with the gerundial form of the f-word so I guess it ceases to be a euphemism)

      cr

          1. Being as trinitarians consider Jesus to BE God, I think, “Cripes!” and Jiminy Christmas!” should be on the “swear-word” list, as well- including the classic rant of the terminally frustrated: “Well, Christ on a crutch!”
            An old R. Crumb cartoon had a character who introduced himself by saying, “Reist’s the name; Cheezus K. Reist!”

    2. As revealed in “Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Friend” by Christopher Moore(a must read), the middle initial “H” stands for “Hallowed” as per the “Lord’s Prayer.”

        1. Interesting that the variant with ‘H’ does seem to be generally accepted as the canonical form, one rarely sees variants with any other letter. Why this is I don’t know.

          cr

        2. And I was thinking “Hebrew”, because, of course,there were no Christians, as there was no such thing as Christianity, until well after Jesus died (assuming he ever lived).

          Haploid is better. Haploid-transsexual, even, since Mary had no Y chromosome to share.

  13. If “sfoot” refers to God’s foot, I really don’t want to know the referent of “cokk”.

      1. From Wikipedia:
        “At various points in history, a number of churches in Europe have claimed to possess Jesus’ foreskin, sometimes at the same time.”

        It was the last phrase that cracked me up. I’m easily amused.

        cr

  15. I knew “By George”, if only from My Fair Lady. So it was meant as comically anachronistic, I guess?

  16. What about Paul Erdös’ “Supreme Fascist”?

    Is Dawkins’ “The Most Unpleasant Character in all of fiction” technically a euphemism?

    1. Not a euphemism, I think. But I do love that phrase for the way it manages to be so comprehensively rude on all counts.

      cr

  17. When mightily perturbed my Irish mother would let out a “By Cracky!” which supposedly was a 19th century euphemism for “By Christ”.

  18. ‘cokk’ ?
    (Mine thinks it’s God but I usually manage to beat it into submission)

    Interesting that ‘sblood’ has (I presume) turned into ‘bloody’ (also known as the Great Australian Adjective in that it suffices as a universal intensifier everybloodywhere in that bloody country).

    cr

  19. In my Midwestern family, instead of god damn it, to ventilate anger it was “Dad Gum It,” if that counts. We also were taught to sing, “I’m a rambling wreck from Georgia Tech and an elephant engineer” instead of helluva engineer.” I would enjoy seeing an expanded euphemism lexicon . . . I draw a blank for how “Jesus” euphemisms moved into ventilating exclamations and slang.

  20. Since I appear by name twice in that list, I must be G*d.

    Oh, wait, my cats have informed me that I am not.

  22. One of Adelaide’s Botanic Gardens was previously a farm that was gifted to the State upon the death of the owners. There is a small farm dam (pond) which was and is still called ‘the lake’ since the mere thought of someone saying ‘who left the dam(n)gate open?’ was more than the very religious owners could countenance.

  24. From the same book: “Although the growth of the field has been continuous, it has not expanded at a constant rate. There is a notable hiatus between the first two instances in the fourteenth century and the plethora recorded nearly two hundred years later, especially the concentration of terms between 1598 and 1602. This group constitutes about a quarter of the whole field. If we regard 597 as the starting point of Christianity in England, we find that only two euphemisms are recorded in the thousand years elapsing between that date and the Elizabethan period. One explanation for this extraordinary gap could be the lack of surviving written documents. The other is somewhat paradoxical: although the Middle Ages can be rightly regarded as an age of faith, a quite astounding volume of religious swearing was uttered in the form of asseverations, ejaculations, blasphemies, and curses, both personal and institutional. Euphemisms were thus not required, until censorship was instituted in the sixteenth century. Subsequently there are other growth clusters between 1728 and 1749, as well as in the 1840s. Then there is an apparent hiatus between the appearance of the last term (by Godfrey! ) and the present. This indicates a diminution of the power of the taboo as the name of God has become more openly used in print and broadcasting.”

  25. The earliest ones I knew were ‘sblood and ‘sfoot. I knew zounds but did not know it was a euphemism.

  28. Speaking of God, this just in from Lowering the Bar about a man who tried to get a restraining order against God:
    http://loweringthebar.net/2016/05/job-sues.html

    The original report in Times of Israel is pretty good too:
    http://www.timesofisrael.com/man-seeks-restraining-order-against-god/

    Their reporter evidently enjoyed his work that day. I particularly like the photo, headed ‘Illustration of God either present or not in courtroom’ and the note ‘A protocol of the hearing noted that God did not turn up for the session, although it did not specify how the court determined the Omnipresent was not in fact there, as opposed to merely exercising the right to remain silent.’

    cr

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