Re: CHAT: Murgatroyd (was somehow Re: Lenition)

On Fri, 2002-06-28 at 01:34, Roger Mills wrote:
> Dan Sulani wrote:
> >    Anyhow, this thread's got me thinking. "Heavens to  M" seems to
> >be a pretentious takeoff on the more prosaic (American?)
> >"Heavens to Betsy!" (or could Betsy be an intentionally
> >less pretentious version of Murgatroid?).
> >Still, it sounds to me like some sort of euphemism.
>
> I'd guess that "Betsy" is the original. I have heard/read somewhere that it
> was euphemizing _something_, but forget what exactly.   Gosh, Darn/Drat,
> Heck, etc. instead of God, Damn, Hell.  Fudge. Old "Zounds" (God's wounds).
> British Bloody (God's blood) was, I recall, severely proscribed 50 years ago
> or so.
>
> At a family gathering way back then, we kids got a big laugh when we heard
> an adult (woman, yet) go "Oh ssshh......sugar!"
>
> >The only other phrase I can think of, offhand, of the
> >"X to Y" type is "honest to goodness". meaning "genuine."
>
> Disguising "honest to God".
> Ah, dear dead days, when "you don't say that in front of the children", and
> children used Naughty Words at their peril........
It's still the same in my seventeen-year-old presence. (i.e. I'm a
seventeen year-old and still get angry at my younger siblings (11, 14)
when they swear. Of course, IMHO, the only swear word is 'fuck', which I
only use to illustrate the word. Say 'root'[1] or 'shit' or 'bugger' or
'bloody' all you like, just don't say 'f*ck'.

Trisatn.