Talk:Minced oath

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Where have these definitions come from? Some of them don't look right to me.

Eg:

Heck = 'Hell' blended with 'Fuck'
Shucks = 'Shit' blended with 'Fuck'

Just because they have a ck in, does it mean they're blended with "fuck"? I've never though of either of them as that. Checking them in the OED and Merriam-Webster, both say the same thing: heck is a euphamism for hell, and shucks is from shuck which means the shell of a pea, hence something of little/no value - neither dictionary mentions shit or fuck for these words. I guess this whole list needs checking. fabiform | talk 14:41, 2 Apr 2004 (UTC)

You're right. Check out http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=heck&searchmode=none and http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?search=shucks&searchmode=none . Citizen Premier 16:25, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I don't believe "feck" deserves to be mentioned as a euphemism for "fuck". "Feck" was established in common Irish speech, apparently not related to "fuck"—instead a corruption of Irish Gaelic words.

Doshea3 19:40, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Bullshit, why don't you stop typing in shit and take a nice nap instead.83.70.238.150 09:20, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] By Jove

"(Jove is another name for Zeus, the most powerful Roman deity)"

The Roman god to which this refers is most commonly known as Jupiter, and the link points to a page entitled Jupiter, so why use the name Zeus, which is almost always used in reference to the Greek god? I'd change this myself, but my knowledge of classical mythology is extremely limited, and it seems obvious enough that it would not have been unintentionally, although I can't fathom why it should be so.

TheJames 17:00, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I suggested a link between "by Jove" and "Jehovah", but Jfruh removed it entirely because they're not etymologically related. True, "Jove" in this phrase is etymologically the short name for "Jupiter", and expanding "Jove" as "Jehovah" in this instance would be a folk etymology involving a false cognate. But still, isn't it likely that this is in the back of the speaker's mind when he uses "by Jove" to mean "by God"? --Damian Yerrick 23:38, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

If we have it in, we should make it very clear that it is in fact a folk etymology. --Jfruh 03:21, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blimey!

So according to the article, 'Cor blimey' is 'God blind me' and 'Gorblimey' is 'God blame me'. Surely one of those is wrong, but which is it ladies and gentlemen?

Mooky 05:39, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

    It's the latter that is wrong. Blimey = 'Blind me' Xyster 13:45, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

Son of a gun

It is not known if "son of a gun" actually originated from sailors' wives giving birth under cannons aboard ship. Look here.

Flaming Heck

Not sure I understand why this isn't simply a euphemism for 'Flaming Hell'; it would make a lot more sense. What's the source for this? Xyster 13:50, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Organization

This page got really boring for me because all the words are in alphabetical order. That means 5 words meaning "Jesus" in a row then two ordinary ones then more "Jesus" then etc. etc. I think they should be listed in headings: "Jesus" including "For Christs Sake" and so on then another main heading for "God" etc. Gohst 10:23, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

In New Zealand, 'Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and the Bluff' is a common minced oath. Really. They are all South Island towns.

[edit] Hey Zeus = Jesus?

I would argue that it's not actually greeting the god Zeus, but, in fact, pronouncing Jesus in a different language (I know it's how you pronounce it in Spanish, and probably others). —Preceding unsigned comment added by StarkRG (talk • contribs) 13:44, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Actually, that's not how "Jesus" is pronounced in Spanish. "Jesus" (spelled "Jesús" in Spanish) is pronounced "he-soos", with a pronounced 'h' and an open 'e' as in "hell". Capi 06:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

What about Latin pronounciation? It all hinges on how the e is a long a, and if the s is pronounced properly as s instead of z.--WPaulB 22:06, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

In Latin it's I-e-so-us.

[edit] 'Smeg'

Isn't Red Dwarf's 'Smeg' short for smegma?

No. Not intentionally. It just happens to be shorter than smegma which is a COMPLETELY unrelated word. Gohst 11:33, 4 February 2006 (UTC) (wrong - see below)

NEW: Smeg in Red Dwarf is used to mean Smegma, and in turn as an expletive. Saccerzd 18:08, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I wouldnt be so sure. I think the producers may have just said that to be cagey. If you watch the 2nd Smeg Outs video with footage from a Red Dwarf convention, observe Craig Charles response when a kid asks him what smeg means. 172.214.128.160 17:14, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

It's a little difficult to call. It seems that the relationship was not originally intended. If a made up word happens to correspond to another real one by accident, should it be assumed that they are related?

[edit] Frag

But see http://www.answers.com/frag&r=67

frag (frăg) Slang.

n: A fragmentation grenade.

tr.v., fragged, frag·ging, frags: To wound or kill (a fellow soldier) by throwing a grenade or similar explosive at the victim: “He got fragged. Blown away” (Bobbie Ann Mason).

[edit] Oh my heck and Utah

As someone who moved to Utah after growing up in southern California I found "oh my heck" to be quite amusing. People here do say "oh my hell" when they're trying to sound more profane. They for the most part, however, aren't aware that it doesn't exist outside of Utah and that saying "oh my hell" is just as odd sounding to outsiders as "oh my heck." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.2.79.247 (talk • contribs) 18:09, March 31, 2006 (UTC)

[edit] GM Chrysler?

"GM Chrysler." It should be self-explanatory just by saying it out loud. Just something I heard once.

[edit] Fsck

I've seen (and sometimes used) "fsck" on geek message boards. Maybe it should be added. Oobyduby 20:57, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

[edit] This list has gotten out of hand...

... and I believe it's partly my fault for organizing it like this. It seems that the current formatting is viewed as an open invitation for people to add whatever silly variations of 'fuck' and 'shit' that they can come up with.

I see several problems with the list. Firstly, it is disproportionally long for its importance, and I can't see this amount of detail being useful to anyone. Perhaps more importantly, however, these non-words are unverifiable. They are mostly just words used in colloquial speech, without any written material to cite. In addition to allowing falsities and silliness, listing only minced oaths that the editors have heard opens the door wide open for a strong cultural systematic bias.

I'm not sure what the solution is. Perhaps it will just require a severe trimming? ~ Booya ^Bazooka 06:32, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. "God bless America" for "God"? What is that? Oh my god bless america? A lot of these could be deleted-- we don't need every minced oath ever. IMFromKathlene 23:30, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Many could be deleted, indeed. But which ones? ~ Booya ^Bazooka 00:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

I have removed the list from this article altogether and moved it to List of minced oaths. Which I hope will get deleted very soon. - ∅ (∅), 09:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I moved the historical examples there too. - ∅ (∅), 09:35, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Mincing the oath by completing a different phrase seems like it should have its own subheader. "GOD... bless America!" or "JESUS... loves me!"

[edit] Wooden swearing

I won't make the addition until I can pin down a couple of examples, but in the Little House on the Prairie books, the mother (Ma) uses the term "wooden swearing" to refer to minced oaths. I'll also think about whether it's there's an appropriate way or place — maybe in a section about social responses to minced oaths &dash; to add an item about Maya Angelou's story about being punished as a child for saying "By the way," which her grandmother considered as an oath ("the Way" representing Jesus) but which could in that case be considered a minced oath by others. Hope that makes sense. Lawikitejana 06:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] “I wouldn't give a blank for such a blank blank”

I've recently read For Whom the Bell Tolls, and its characters often use profanity; however, all such words are replaced by the word “obscenity” regardless of their role in the sentence, e. g. “Go obscenity yourself”. Perhaps it should also be mentioned in the article? 82.195.149.147 08:58, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] In fiction

I think most of the "in fiction" references are actually neologisms rather than minced oaths. They should be removed. They are not indended to be a diminutive of a swear word, but rather a swear word in a different place and/or time. However, I think "frack" should be added, since it is used in the present time as a minced oath, even though it is a proper swear word in Battlestar. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Philvarner (talk • contribs)

I agree. Also, the section needs notable examples, not something from Farscape or Judge Dredd. Or even Dilbert. The section is well-referenced, but useless. - ∅ (∅), 21:42, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Some of the science fiction examples are right on topic, in that they're being used as direct substitutes for English profanities (which in some cases they sound very much like). Other fictional profanities may be used purely for worldbuilding to illustrate language change, so we need to stick to cases where the use as a substitute has been admitted by the creators or commented on by others.

I do agree with heavily pruning the section, but think you threw out a baby or two with the bathwater: "frak", as one of the few fictional profanities to verifiably escape the context of the original fiction, is if anything more significant than a Gore Vidal joke that didn't even appear in later editions of the same book. —Cel ithemis 23:34, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Rewritten. Also, the "Minced oaths as humor" section isn't working. The first sentence makes the overbroad claim that minced oaths tend to become "humorously quaint" as they lose their power (when, actually, linguists note that euphemisms become more offensive over time, leading to the invention of new euphemisms). The rest is just random examples that have little in common with each other. Realistically, it's functioning as a place for people to dump examples of minced oaths that they think are funny, and I don't see a way to turn it into an encyclopedic discussion. —Cel ithemis 00:22, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

== Can someone debunk this?: www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/03_08/b3821119.htm Geyser is the other word according to this article that has migrated into English from Iceland. Mt. Hekla, a volcano was seen to be a gateway to hell by European tourists (at least if my memory preserves - I'm not quoting directly from the article so anything I write is now secondhand.)

==

David Levine 03:04, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Heck = Hell + Fuck

I've always assumed it to be granted that Heck is a combination of Hell and Fuck. Notice that "heck" and "fuck" occur in the same type of expressions (of course not every instance) where no other "swear" word can occur.

What the fuck?
What the hell?
What the heck?

But:

What the shit?
What the damn?
What the ass?
What the bitch?

The last four don't make any sense, do they? Although the first ones don't make sense literally, they have an interpretable meaning. If you disagree with me, you can get the fuck out of here, because I don't know what the hell you're talking about. JesseRafe 04:56, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

- Disagree. "By Heck!" is an old Northern English exclamation still common in Yorkshire and "By Fuck" makes as little sense as anything in the second list. There are many instances where, in British English at least, "hell" and not "fuck" would be the obvious alternative to "heck" (at least until the last few years, when it seems to be "fuck" with everything - can I blame rap music?); e.g. "I got one heck of a fright". My late father told me that "Heck" was a shortening of "Hecate" but I can't find any support for that, though I could speculate that "'ecky thump" (polite alternative to "bloody hell") is a corruption of "Hecate". NickS 10:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Wait, I just want to say, for the sake of irony, that this talk page on minced oaths is more profane that the one on profanity. -Uagehry456|Talk 04:42, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Douglas Adams disagreed...

On the whole the discussion is fair enough, though the examples given are fairly narrow in scope and I would argue with some of them being minced oaths at all. But I have to take issue with the glossary of Douglas Adams' terms from Hitch-hiker. These are given precisely and authoritatively but with no justification whatsoever, and unless they can be backed up they should be removed.

I interviewed Douglas Adams on two occasions for the BBC. The first time was a year or so after the original radio series, on his tour to publicise the first book (I still have the copy he signed for me then). One of the subjects that came up was the language, specifically including "zarking fardwarks" but not, of course, "Belgium" which came later. Douglas had already explained how the apparent cascade of ideas in both media was actually the result of him writing extremely slowly - later, as many will know, his inability to write to a deadline became legendary. He told me "zarking fardwarks" had no relation to anything real, it just "sounded rude". The same, he said, was true of many of his words, they just sounded right and didn'tmean anything. This section of the interview was not, in the end, broadcast and I no longer have the original tape, but since I was a huge fan I remember the occasion very clearly.

On the second occasion the words came up again and this time he himself brought up "Belgium". He said it was simply the word that popped into his head when he needed it, and he liked it because Belgium had such a reputation (in the UK at least) as a boring country. He also claimed it was a very good word purely as an expletive for letting off steam; rather like "Gordon Bennett". But there was absolutely no suggestion that it represented a particular English swear word, be it "fuck" or anything else.

You can take these interpretations too far - look at Lewis Carroll - and it is all great fun, but it should not be put forward as fact. As far as I can see somebody just made up this bit.

Chris Jones Former BBC Radio Presenter skygod_wandering@hotmail.com

86.29.135.173 13:46, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Jeez

I think there should be a mention on jeez somewhere in the article. (probably a oath of the Christian lord, since it looks alike), so people don't go "Why the hell was I redirected here?"

This is huge article, and there shouldn't be a problem in mentioning that jeez is a oath of Jesus. TheBlazikenMaster 00:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] d'oh!

I would suggest that Homer Simpson's "d'oh!" is intended to mean that he begins to say "damn!", realises that there could be children present, and censors himself half way through because he wants to be a good parent. The fact that he cannot even allow himself to vent his frustration with a swear word adds to the irony. The adults in the audience hear the beginning of "damn", but the young kids probably would not, so it sails past the network censors. In popular use, it's been adopted as a Minced Oath, but I'm not exactly sure you could say that Homer Simpson uses it as such in the "context of the original fiction".

I also would suggest also that "Jeez" is a similar application of belated self-censorship, especially with the addition of another name, as in "Jeez Louise", in a feeble attempt to disguise what was going to be said.

"Jesus Murphy" - would that not be a mid-phrase modification of "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph"?

While we're at it, my wife occasionally says "God Bless America!" when she's mildly vexed, which she got from her grandmother. I'm thinking it's a mid-phrase modification of "God damn it!"

As far as words like "frak" (or is it "frack"?) or "frell" go, I agree that they're a bit different from some of the other examples listed here in that within the context of the character's POV, these are the actual offensive versions of swear words, and not substitutes, and therefore it makes them fictional neologisms. However, since they have "escaped the context of the original fiction", I think that they have become certified Minced Oaths. Planish 22:11, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

I agree that "D'oh" is less rude version of "Damn it", I have thought of that for a long time. TheBlazikenMaster 22:23, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think that d'oh! is self-censorship, I don't think that Homer Simpson has the mental capacity to self-censor every time. It's more just a generalized expression of frustration. With something like "Jeez", it's sometimes self-censorship, and sometimes not. If you're thinking of saying Jesus and say Jeez instead, it's self-censorship. If you just say Jeez as an expression of frustration without giving any thought to the idea that Jeez began as a minced oath, then it is not self-censorship.--RLent (talk) 16:14, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Jesus Aitch Christ

The article is fine as it is but there oughta be a list of minced oaths... I nominate Jesus H. Christ for inclusion. Binksternet 22:43, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of minced oaths - ∅ (∅), 05:26, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] "Freaking"

Removed this sentence as still lacking a source, and seeming (to me) to be original research- "Freaking" (and variants) is widely mistaken for, and used as, a minced form of "fucking", but is, in fact, a distinct obscenity referring to masturbation or mutual masturbation.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Frack

A good addition to Minced oaths in fiction section would be Frack from the Battlestar Galactica serie. Frack has its own page on Wikipedia but maybe it should be merged with Minced Oath. LaP 14:48, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Clbuttic mistake

Another problem of word censors that don't check for space or context is the clbuttic mistake (and similar): http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Clbuttic-Mistake-.aspx 128.232.228.174 (talk) 20:39, 15 April 2008 (UTC). Worthy of inclusion in main article.

[edit] Dog's Bollocks

I've removed the claim " dog's bollocks for God's bollocks from popular use, ", because it looks like quite a subtle form of vandalism. I've head an alternate etymology for the term, (from 'Box Delux', in contrast to 'Box standard', which became 'Bog Standard') - in fact I think it might have features on Balderdash and Piffle and I don't think people at the time of these oaths would be thinking about God having genitalia. --Neil (talk) 22:08, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suffering Succotash

I did a search on suffering succotash and it redirected me to this page. I dont know what it is but I would be interested in knowing what it replaces. 203.134.124.36 (talk) 02:29, 2 June 2008 (UTC)