Addendum:
I had wondered if our Sam Hill had anything to do with the expression, What in the Sam Hill --? and looked it up on World Wide Words, my source for all things etymological. He is not. No one is quite sure where the expression started, despite some folk etymologies pinning it to a General Sam Hill in Guilford, Connecticut in the late 19th century. He cannot be the source, either, as the expression dates back in printed form to as early as the 1830's.
Erratum:
Others in the household spent some weary hours on wikipedia and other online sources last night, and they learned that while Queen Marie of Romania may have been considered a bit lax in her morals at the time, by modern standards she was reasonably staid. So the household disappointedly concludes that another of the three reputedly scandalous relationships between Sam Hill and his female supporters was merely platonic.
6 comments:
Platonic relationships when he could have been satisfying our love of the scandalous?
What in the Sam Hill was he thinking?
According to my own internet research, the term Sam Hill is a euphemism for Hell, dating to the early 19th century when it was rude to use any profanity.
It may be linked to 'Samiel', one of the names of fallen angels used as a devil's name.
There are a number of these euphemisms still used today, but at the moment I can't think of any.
Not that it's exactly polite to use profanity now.
What the heck? What in blazes..? Both euphemisms for Hell in current usage.
Drat and Darn are euphmisms for Damn.
Cor Blimey isn't a euphemism, but a corruption of 'God Blind Me', an old old profanity, just as Struth (which you still hear in England sometimes) is a corruption of God's Truth.
Isn't gadzooks another of those corruptions (perhaps for God's Truth)?
It really is too bad that our society simply uses the actual curse these days, because it was so much more colorful before. I miss Grandpa's "Dog gone it", and the opportunity to say, "Jumpin' Jehasophat!"
Doggone it, is apparently a version of god damn it.
Also, copied and pasted from the net:
The exclamation drat or drat it is now considered so inoffensive that it could be used by a Sunday-school teacher in front of her bishop without risk of blushes. Its original form was God rot [it], however....
Streuth, blimey and gorblimey are exclamations which can be heard in Britain and Australia. Blimey is a shortened form of gorblimey which is a garbled way of saying "God blind me". In full, streuth is "by God's truth" and it is a survivor of a large genre of God's [something]. Thus, gadzooks (or od's wucks) is literally "God's hooks", the hooks likely being a reference to the nails used to fasten Christ to the cross. Many of these God's... expressions were reduced to od's... or odds... as in odds bodikins. This exclamation, popular in Shakespeare's day, has nothing to do with needles - it means "[by] God's little body" or, more loosely, "[by] the precious body of Christ". Another exclamation from the same period that is even more fun to say than odds bodikins is zounds. This, in full, is "[by] God's wounds" and as before, it was "God the son" not "God the father" who was implied.
Post a Comment