Yes, I have been negligent. But I am finally out from under the crushing weight of Spitzer program reviews. Hurrah! In celebration I will consider a bit of "did-you-know" trivia.
Gadzooks. It is a real swear word that used to be very offensive, but is now quite cute.
It is short for God's Hooks and refers to the crucifiction (or specifically, the nails that put Jesus there). It is similar to many swear words that Shakespeare liked to use, like 'Zwounds and 'Sblood (God's Wounds and God's Blood), which were also considered pretty salty at the time. It is why they were mostly said by his Falstaff character (although other's were known to lose it from time to time).
Anyway, for some reason Gadzooks has become a cute, Ay Caramba! level phrase, while the other's have faded into history. I like to think of it as something offensive I can say without anyone realizing. Like talking about being gypped. Fucking Romany.
S.
Somewhere between Nonsense and No Sense At All
Buy a T-Shirt and Help in the Fight Against Cranial Panis Mica!
Links You Should Love
Important Sidebar Facts
- This blog is probably late, behind, and/or delayed. I am so very sorry and I will do everything in my power to catch up, make up, or otherwise atone for my sins as a writer and human being.
- Remodeling a house is hard and expensive. I wish it cost less money. More money would be good and please send me money. Boo-hoo.
- Having twin babies is also hard. However a lot of stuff they do is cool. I will do my best to express this feeling in more robust, expressive terms, but will probably in the end fall back on terms like "sweet", "awesome", and "cool". I will also occasionally throw in an adverbial "pretty" in front of those adjectives, the worst sort of grammatical heresy. This occurs for the dual reason that sometimes the ups and downs of parenting are difficult to articulate and also because this section of the blog usually gets written last and therefore is most likely to suffer serious writer fatigue.
2 comments:
Strangely enough, the twelve-letter word often abbreviated MF did not originally have a salty meaning.
It comes from the Indo-european Moth'ren fawlk renna, which refers to the people who would sweep rats out of domestic buildings.
During the Black Plague, these people -- not surprisingly -- would be the first infested. Shunned by the rest of the populace, it didn't take long before the "fawlk renna" were referred to in a sad, even ironic way -- and then, before long, a pejoritive way.
When adopted into English, the well-known phrase mutated -- it so happened that the two English words, put together, formed an equally repugnant idea. It stuck.
I am not sure I believe this one. Do you have some sort of documentation?
Post a Comment