Minced oath

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A minced oath is an expression based on a profanity which has been altered to reduce or remove the disagreeable or objectionable characteristics of the original expression. The profanities upon which minced oaths are based are usually religious in nature. The use of minced oaths originally began in the United Kingdom sometime before the Victorian Age, as part of the cultural impact of Puritanism after the Protestant Reformation.

Some minced oaths became well-known as a result of use in theatre, where there were sometimes strict taboos on the use of certain religious phrases; many survive to this day in literary contexts (such as the Shakespearean "'swounds" or "zounds"). The censorship caused people to develop a wide variety of minced oaths to avoid swearing on holy names. They were used for swearing and other types of interjections. With time they came to have a mildly comic effect. Sometimes the comedy was intentional, such as when U.S. comedian W. C. Fields would bypass Hollywood restrictions by exclaiming "Godfrey Daniel!" as a substitute for "God damn it!"

Some minced oaths are a handy escape route to avoid finishing a profanity one has inadvertently begun. For example, one might begin to say "shit," decide against it, and conceal the error by completing the word as "shoot."

Although minced oaths are not as strong or offensive as the words from which they are derived, some such as "mofo" are often avoided in polite speech.

Examples

Christ

Christ

• Christmas
• Crikey
• Cripes
• Krimeny

For Christ's sake

(sometimes corrupted to "for Christ sakes")

• Chrissakes
• For Fuck's sake
• For Pete's sake
• For Heaven's sake
• For Cry (possibly a Pennsylvanianism as it appears in John Updike's "Rabbit" trilogy.)
• For crying out loud (also, a way of hinting at 'fuck' or sanitising it after speaking; "Fuck... rying out loud")

Jesus

• Gee
• Gee whizz
• Gee willikers
• Hey Zeus (referring to the Spanish pronunciation)
• Jebus (Homer Simpson used this word in an episode of The Simpsons)
• Jeez
• Jehoshaphat
• John Banelis
• Sheesh

Jesus Christ

• Christ on a Bike
• Cheese n' Rice
• Jason Crisp
• Jeepers Creepers
• Jeepers Cripes
• Jeezum Crow
• Jeezy Creezy
• Jiminy Christmas
• Jiminy Cricket
• Jiminy Jillikers
• Jings Crivvens (Scottish)
• Judas Priest (such as by baseball innovator Branch Rickey)

Jesus Christ, God Almighty

• Cheese 'n' crackers got all muddy

By Jesus

• bejabbers
• bejeebers
• b'jeezers

Jumping Jesus

• Jumping Jehoshaphat
• Yumping Yiminy

Christ defend us

• Crivvens

Jerusalem

• Gee
• Gee willikers

Suffering Saviour

• Suffering succotash (tagline of the cartoon character Sylvester the cat)

God

God

• Goodness
• God bless America
• Golly
• Gordon Bennett
• Gosh
• Cor

Good God

• Good garden party
• Good godfather
• Good heavens
• Good grief
• Good gravy
• Goodness gracious

God almighty

• Gosh a-mighty

By God

• Begorrah
• By George
• By gosh
• By gum
• By Jove (Jove is another name for Jupiter, the most powerful deity in Roman mythology. Also, using folk etymology, “Jove” might be considered the root of “Jehovah.”)

By God's body

• By golly

My God

• My goodness
• My gosh

God's hooks

(nails pinning Jesus to the cross)

• Gadzooks

God rot it

• Drat

My Lord

• My land (Marge Simpson uses this term in an episode of The Simpsons)
• Mylanta (D.J. Tanner uses this term in an episode of Full House)

Damnation

God damn

• Dad gum
• Doggone
• G.D.
• God bless America
• Goldarn
• Gosh darn
• Cod Dan

God damn it

• Ad Slahnit
• Bob Saget
• Consarnit
• Dad gummit
• Dablastit
• Dagnammit
• Dagnabbit
• Dangnabbit
• Gat Dangit
• God bless it
• Gosh darn it
• Gosh durn it
• Gul Durn It

God blind/

• Cor blimey
• Gorblimey

Blind/

• Blimey

• Dangnation
• Darnation
• Tarnation
• Thunderation

Damn

• Dang
• Dare
• Darn
• Dash (Dash my buttons)
• Dern
• Drat
• Man

Damn it/Dammit

• Namdit

Fucking dammit

• Duckin' Fammit (spoonerism)

Hell

Hell

• Heck (A popular minced oath in Utah is "Oh my heck!", but the equivalent expression, "Oh my hell!", does not seem to exist anywhere.)
• H E double toothpicks/hockey sticks
• Sam Hill

Bloody Hell

• Bleeding heck
• Blinking heck

What the hell

• What the hey
• What the heck
• What the ham sandwich

Shit

• Blue chips
• Bulldoody
• Blue shoes
• Bolshevik
• Bushwa
• B.S.

• Ish
• It
• Schmitt
• Shiitake
• Sheesh
• Sheet
• She, I, It
• Shish Kebab
• Shoot
• Shiz
• Shuck
• Spit
• Stuff
• Sugar
• Sugar honey ice tea (Initialism)
• crap (can be used as a replacement for shit in any other of the listed minced oaths)

Shit hits the fan

• Fit hits the shan (spoonerism, Australian)
• Spaghetti hits the fan (from )
• Spit hits the fan (film version of West Side Story)
• Excrement hits the air conditioning (From Hocus Pocus)

Full of shit

• Full of it (which can also mean 'full of themselves', 'think they're great', etc)

Holy shit

• Holy spit (frequently used in comic books in the 1970s)
• Hotel Sierra (military slang, HS from NATO phonetic alphabet)
• Holy crap
• Holy shiznit

Tough shit

• Shut fit (spoonerism, Australian)
• T.S.

Fuck

Fuck

• Farm
• Fauck
• Favre
• Feck (not etymologically related: feck is an old Irish expression; however "feck" may still be used as a minced oath)
• Fetch
• Fiddlesticks
• Figs
• Fink
• Foot
• Fork
• Freak
• Frick
• Fruit
• Frig (Interestingly, it was originally the word for masturbation, its replacement of fuck seems to have taken place around the turn of the twentieth century.)
• Fudge
• Funk

Fucking

• Farking
• Farvin'
• Flipping
• Freaking
• Forking
• Friggin'
• Frickin'
• Fsckin'
• Porking

Fucking Hell

• Far canal
• Flipping heck
• Flaming heck

Motherfucker

• Futhermucker (spoonerism)
• Maryland farmer
• Melon farmer
• Mofo
• Monstertrucker
• Mothertrucker
• Motherfudger
• Motherscratcher
• Mothersucker (or muddasuck)
• Mortar forker
• Muddy funster
• Mother-Father
• Mother Hubbard
• Mickey-fickey
• Melon picker
• Martha Focker
• Motherfunky (as popularised by Big Brother UK Series 6 housemate Roberto Conte)
• Modderfokker (Dutch: Mud Fokker, pronounced nearly the same)
• Othermay Uckerfay (Pig Latin)

Motherfucking

• Ever-lovin'
• Mother-loving
• Mother-sucking

Buddy Fucker

(military slang for betrayal among friends)

• Blue Falcon
• Bravo Foxtrot (Initials from NATO_phonetic_alphabet)

Fuck off

• Far Gough or Far Cough
• Go forth and multiply
• F.O.

Fucked up

• Fup duck
• fubar

No fucking worries

• No wucking furries/no wuckers (spoonerism, Australian)

Shit fuck

• Sugarfoot

Miscellaneous

• Cocksucker (Usually used to refer to a police officer): Copsucker
• Cocksucker: Chinese Dentist
• Crap: Crud, Crad, Crup
• Son of a bitch: Son of a gun, S.O.B., Sun of a biscuit, son of a nutcracker, .
• Suck: Stink, Stuck
• Generic vulgarism: Holy cow (famously utilized by Harry Caray), Horse (expletive such as "fuck!" or "shit!", popularized by Alan Alda),. e4spit (pronounced "a force pit")

Historical

Minced oaths have a long history. Examples used in the 16th or 17th centuries include:

• Criminy = Christ
• Egad = A God or Ye gods
• Gadzooks = God's hooks (referring to the nails in Jesus on the cross)
• Od or Odd = God
• Odds-bodkins = God's nails (again, referring to the nails on the cross)
• Sacré bleu (French, literally "sacred blue") = Sang de Dieu ("God's blood")
• 'Sblood = God's Blood
• 'Sdeath = God's death
• 'Strewth = God's Truth
• Zounds or 'Swounds = God's wounds
• Odsplut = God's Blood

Some of these euphemisms have taken on a meaning of their own. "Heck", for example, has been jocularly presented as the place where the souls of deceased people who were somewhat sinful - but not bad enough to warrant the eternal torment of Hell - are punished. One example of this concept in popular literature is in the comic strip Dilbert, in which a character named Phil, The Prince of Insufficient Light (a milder styling than "Prince of Darkness") is the ruler of Heck, and appears periodically to inflict mild punishments ("darn"ings) upon characters for their moderate transgressions.

Fictional

Writers have occasionally invented their own alternatives for today's swear words. In science fiction, this illustrates the evolution of language over time, and also allows the characters to naturally avoid using television-censored words.

In reaction to a Supreme Court ruling on the use of obscenity, Robert Anton Wilson substituted obscene words in the book Schrödinger's Cat III with the names of Supreme Court justices from the 1970s.

Fictional minced oaths have also been used in film for comedic effect, such as in the film Johnny Dangerously, in which fictional Italian gangster Roman Maroni frequently speaks strings of invented minced oaths, e.g., "You lousy corksuckers."

• Bags = Damn (Sword of Truth novels)
• Cop = Shit (Hammer's Slammers novels)
• D'Arvit = A fairy word of which the English translation is said to be too offensive to print (Frequently said by the fairy characters in the Artemis Fowl Series by Eoin Colfer)
• Dren = Shit (from Farscape)
• Drok = Fuck (from Judge Dredd - one of a number of specially constructed words for releasing stress)
• Fester = Fuck (Star Wars novels)
• Feth = Fuck (A Tanith swear from the Gaunt's Ghosts novel series by Dan Abnett)
• Frag = Fuck (Shadowrun, various Military Fiction)
• Frak = Fuck (from Battlestar Galactica (2003))
• Frell = Fuck (from Farscape)
• Frelnik = Fucker (from Farscape)
• Frick = Fuck (Shadowrun)
• Fudge Crackers = Fuck (Phil of the Future)
• Gorramit = Goddamnit (from Firefly)
• Grife = Damn (Legion of Super-Heroes)
• Holy Flurking Schnit = Holy Fucking Shit (The Simpsons)
• Holy Shock = Holy Shit (Spider-Man 2099)
• Nucking futs = a play on Fucking nuts (from dicky roberts)
• Nass = Shit (Legion of Super-Heroes)
• Smeg = Many uses (Red Dwarf) (derived from smegma)
• Shazbot = Shit (Tribes, Mork and Mindy)
• Snap = Shit (That's So Raven)
• Sprock = Fuck (Legion of Super-Heroes)
• Squaj = Bitch (Legion of Super-Heroes)
• Tralk = Slut (from Farscape)
• Via = God (Hammer's Slammers novels)
• Poodoo = Shit (Star Wars movies, Huttese language)

See also

• Blasphemy
• Euphemism
• Judas Priest (A music band whose name derives from a blasphemous euphemism for Christ)
• List of exclamations used by Captain Haddock (A well-known fictional user of minced oaths)
• Profanity

 

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