Re: CHAT: sacre bleu!

There is an interesting sample of French (rather old
fashioned) swearings in a song from Georges Brassens,
La Ronde des Jurons:

(Refrain)
"Tous les morbleus, tous les ventrebleus
Les sacrebleus et les cornegidouilles
Ainsi, parbleu, que les jarnibleus
Et les palsambleus
Tous les cristis, les ventres saint-gris
Les par ma barbe et les noms d´une pipe
Ainsi, pardi, que les sapristis
Et les sacristis
Sans oublier les jarnicotons
Les scrogneugneus et les bigr´s et les bougr´s
Les saperlottes, les cré nom de nom
Les pestes, et pouah, diantre, fichtre et foutre
Tous les Bon Dieu
Tous les vertudieux
Tonnerr´ de Brest et saperlipopette
Ainsi, pardieu, que les jarnidieux
Et les pasquedieux"

(all 'bleu' for 'Dieu'; Jarnidieu = Je renie Dieu = I
blaspheme God; jarnicoton = Je renie Coton; I heard
that Coton was the King's confessor, who told him,
better than blaspheming God, he should rather
blaspheme Coton; cré = sacré = holy. Foutre is still
commonly used, it refers to sexual act and to sperm)

(in Quebec, there are a lot of interesting variants
little known in France, like ostie, tabarnak etc.)

--- jcowan@REUTERSHEALTH.COM wrote:
> Mark J. Reed scripsit:
>
> > Can someone enlighten me to the origin of this
> phrase?
> > What's sacred or holy about the color blue?
>
> It's just a euphemism for "sacre Dieu", analogous to
> "darned" for "damned"
> in English (though "darned" gets its specific
> phonemes from "tarnal",
> a variant of "Eternal").
>


=====
Philippe Caquant

"He thought he saw a Rattlesnake / That questioned him in Greek: / He looked
again, and found it was / The Middle of Next Week. / "The one thing I regret',
he said, / "Is that it cannot speak !' " (Lewis Carroll)

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