DEBORAH CROMBIE: I ran across a piece earlier this week suggesting that we could upgrade our swearing (and make it more socially acceptable) by resurrecting some choice Victorian exclamations. This tickled me, and I've been going around all week declaiming GADZOOKS! And FIE!
GADZOOKS, in case you were wondering, is probably a portmanteau of GOD'S HOOKS, and you'd say this when expressing shocked disbelief.
"Oh, FIE," on the other hand, is what you mutter when you've stepped in something rather disgusting.
In the same vein, you might try ZOUNDS, a mashup of GOD'S WOUNDS, and useful for expressing exasperation in the same way you'd say, "Oh, darn it."
Well, maybe you would say "darn it." In my house we tend to swear like sailors, and there are only a few words too colorful for everyday usage. And I love my British swear words, so am never short of a "bloody h*ll" or a "bollocks."
Those proper Victorians liked DRATTED and BLASTED, too.
And I think we can probably guess this one!
How about GADSBUDLIKINS? Short for "God's body."
Or ARFARFAN'ARF, a Victorian term for a drunkard. The thinking on that one is that "arf" is slang for "half", as in half pints, and an arfarfan'arf is someone who's had too many of those!
If you are really annoyed with the person who just cut you off in traffic, you can roll down your window and shout, "You FOPDOODLE!" In other words, a dumb person who is always making poor choices. (This has to be my favorite.)
Or, when your least favorite politician says something mind-bogglingly stupid, you disgustedly mute the TV with "Oh, shut your BONE-BOX, you RATBAG."
The Victorians also said all the words that we now consider to be of the four-letter variety, as well as many others the definitions of which tread on our rules of etiquette here on the blog! (Although you might get away with them in Monopoly...)
