I like to call it my Harry Potter scar.  It’s one of the few permanent ones on my body, remembered less by the excruciating pain upon receiving it, and more from how I suffered its arrival in utter silence.  I’ll talk about it more later in this post…

For Pete’s Sake Day

Today is For Pete’s Sake Day, a commemoration of those verbal replacement players we call in during times of extreme anger, stress or pain, so as to not cause Grandma Lorraine, quietly watching Golden Girls in the next room, to spray her chamomile tea all over the sofa.  We all have our perennial favorites — Criminy, Dagnabbit, Doggone, Gadzooks, Jeepers Creepers, Judas Priest, and Tarnation, to name a few.

It’s always amazing to me, how a split second after slamming a hammer on our thumb our minds can register the presence of others, and instantly rein in that primeval desire to shout obscenities aloud like the foulest of sailors.

Explanation and Origin

To those who care about terminology, they are officially known as minced oaths, introduced into our vernacular during the Middle Ages, when the Church monitored the language and actions of the common folk, and were quick to punish any offenses.  Commonly used euphemisms launched at God or Jesus in times of anger and stress had to be glossed over and reworked to avoid such punishments.

Later, as things religiously loosened up, minced oaths became personally chosen alternatives for those who wanted to maintain an air of greater dignity about them, even in times of agony.

Fun Examples of Minced Oaths

Here are 77 ways to cuss out loud without actually cursing, along with what was meant, courtesy of Phrases.Org, with some censoring done by me (Hey, this is a family blog…).

77 Minced Oaths

Begorrah –> By God
Bejabbers –> By Jesus
Bleeding heck –> Bloody Hell
Blimey –> Blind me
Blinking heck –> Bloody Hell
By George –> By God
By golly –> By God’s body
By gosh –> By God
By gum –> By God
By Jove –> By God
Cheese and Rice –> Jesus Christ
Chrissakes –> For Christ’s sake
Christmas –> Christ
Cor blimey –> God blind me
Crikey –> Christ
Criminy –> Christ
Cripes –> Christ
Crivvens –> Christ defend us
Dad gum –> God d*mn
Dagnabbit –> God d*mn it
Dagnammit –> God d*mn it
Dang –> D*mn
Dangnabbit –> God d*mn it
Dangnation –> D*mnation
Darn –> D*mn
Darnation –> D*mnation
Doggone –> God d*mn
Drat –> God rot it
Egad –> A God
Figs –> F*ck
Fink –> F*ck
Flaming heck –> F*cking Hell
Flipping heck –> F*cking Hell
For crying out loud –> For Christ’s sake
For Pete’s sake –> For St. Peter’s sake
For the love of Mike –> For St. Michael’s sake
Freaking –> f*cking
Gadzooks –> God’s hooks
Gat Dangit –> God d*mn it
Gee –> Jesus
Gee whizz –> Jesus
Gee willikers –> Jesus
Godfrey Daniel –> God
Golly Gee willikers –> Jesus
Good garden party –> Good God
Good grief –> Good God
Goodness gracious –> Good God
Gorblimey –> God blind me
Gosh –> God
Gosh darned –> God d*mned
Heck –> Hell
Holy spit –> Holy sh*t
Jason Crisp –> Jesus Christ
Jebus –> Jesus
Jeepers Creepers –> Jesus Christ
Jeez –> Jesus
Jeezy Creezy –> Jesus Christ
Jehosaphat –> Jesus
Jiminy Christmas –> Jesus Christ
Jiminy Cricket –> Jesus Christ
Judas Priest –> Jesus Christ
Land sakes –> For the Lord’s sake
Lawks a mercy –> Lord have mercy
My goodness –> My God
My gosh –> My God
Odds-bodkins –> God’s sweet body
Sacré bleu –> Sang de Dieu (God’s blood)
Sam Hill –> Hell
Shoot –> sh*t
Shucks –> sh*t
Strewth –> God’s Truth
Suffering succotash –> Suffering Saviour
Sugar –> sh*t
Tarnation –> D*mnation
What in Sam Hill? –> What in d*mn Hell?
Wish to goodness –> Wish to God
Zounds –> God’s wounds

Phew.  Glad I got that out.  Why use minced oaths in our daily lives?  Well, chamomile is hard enough to get out of the chintz without Grandma staring us down in disgust.  And then for most of us there’s the worry about the blunt and instantaneous anger of Mom and Dad, or the feared disapproval of our Aunts and Uncles.  How about around co-workers or the boss?  And nobody wants to be excommunicated after an outburst brought on by slamming our head on the low door frame at our local Church, either.

The Proximity of Caring

Distance.  Perhaps that is what minced oaths are all about.  Whether due to geography, ages or emotional bonding, the closer people are to us, the more proximate to our daily lives, the more we care about what they may think about what we do or say.  While I held my emerging sailor mouth in check around Uncle David and Aunt Debbie, I explored the profound and resilient usage of the F-bomb while playing in the back yard with my brothers and cousins.  While our bosses believe we have a clean mouth, that guy in the next cubicle over, who heard when we spilled our coffee all over last month’s project, likely knows better…

Suffering in Silence

I moved into an apartment almost 3 years ago, along with my two daughters.  My oldest got the room next to mine, built-in cabinets providing her with gobs of storage space.  Wanting to help sort things into these same cabinets, I opened them all, small wooden doors gaping into the room, as I knelt over her innumerable collectibles on the carpet below.

Hearing my daughter bring a number of boxes up the stairs into my room, I wanted to make sure they were being put in a place I could get to easily, so I dropped what I was doing and stood up rapidly.  My forehead met, with enormous impact, the bottom corner of one of the doors I had opened not five minutes earlier.

If you bang your skull just right, you actually can see stars.  I know, because they danced through the sheer pain in my head as I fell to the floor in a fetal position, wanting to scream out creative variations of every obscenity I had ever learned, but not doing so because my children were in in the next rooms.  I lie there, gritting my teeth to the point of cracking them, feeling warm blood trickle between my fingers, as I held my head (and fortunately, my tongue…)

The Proximity of Social Media

I’ve been doing a great deal of blocking lately in Twitter, and have had to remove certain individuals from my friendships in Facebook from time to time.  It’s been for a variety of reasons, such as being insulting to others, or exhibiting small-minded or bigoted behaviors.   When I see it, I don’t entertain it any longer, and am always left wondering how someone can treat relative strangers in such offensive ways.

I believe it’s got a lot to do with the unique feeling of distance in social media, in all facets – geographically, due to to a large user age range, and an overall lack of emotional intimacy.  We’ve all had our share of young idiots who storm into Twitter and see just how many people they can tick off before their account gets disabled from the angry feedback.  We navigate Facebook alongside people whose language is less-than-guarded more often than needed.

Is the problem of how we talk to each other in social media due to not really seeing each other?  Is it because we don’t really spend time, physically, in each other’s presences?  If the loss of civility in social media is due to not having social cues similar to those in real lives, then how do we create replacement signals to use in our own personal experiences online?  Please let me know, as I’m open to suggestions in the comments section, and plan to write about social media intimacy and personal boundaries in the near future…