I grew up with a very articulate father who believed swear words were the truest sign of a bad vocabulary. he kept his southern accent, though. And a lot of his replacement words have stuck with me to this day. hogwash (poop) go fly a kite (f*** off) daggumit doggonit DARN IT Those are the ones that stuck with me the most. No that I'm older I can guess where some of them came from, (hogs wallow in their own poop, basically washing themselves in it. So hogwash could be the drawn out version of shit). I love trying to figure out why these words became words at all;! Do you have any others, or know where any of these came from?
My sources tell me... hogwash Not slang, or of recent coinage. Five hundred years ago, hogwash was the common term for the swill that was fed to swine. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest instance of its use was about 1440, and it read, "They in the kechyn, for iape, pouryd on here hefd hoggyswasch." Translated that reads, "They in the kitchen, for jest, poured hogwash on her head." As a contemptuous term, the first usage dates back to the early 18th century. Since hogwash was not the choices of foods, and considered repulsive to people, the term, "That's hogwash" came to mean that's a bunch of garbage, or that argument isn't worth any more than hogwash. go fly a kite There is speculation that the term originated during the stock market crash of 1929, and it referred to the useless bits of paper being tossed out the window after the crash. Other speculation is that it is a reference to Benjamin Franklin’s electricity experiments, suggesting that the listener perform such as dangerous activity as flying a kite with a key on the end in an electrical storm, the inference being that the listener is so unwanted that the speaker would wish him harm, although used usually in jest, as in “Why don’t you go jump off of a cliff.” I believe that "daggumit" and "doggonit" are used in place of "god damn it" by people who don't want to use the more offensive phrase, as "darn it" is to "damn it."
I love your sources, ken! My mom used to always tell us to go fly a kite when we would joke around with her. My dad uses hogwash more often than he would want me telling. you wouldn't believe how versatile of a word hogwash can be. Some of the other ones I've remembered since I've been thinking about it is mom saying "spit" instead if "shit". "Oh spit!" My dad was a big fan of "well, I'll be" whenever he got frustrated..
Don't ask me why or how but in the last few years the term "Sheesh Louise" has been one of my go to terms , along with "Jeepers Creepers" and "really?!" Maybe my brain has managed to find some Leave it to Beaver rerun or something, I really don't know why certain things pop into my head and stick. "Oakaly Doakoley" springs out from time to time, Ned Flanders is a funny guy. And every so often I get an "Alrighty then"... which is Jim Carrey I think, I just don't remember from which movie. There are times at work when I find that i am agreeing with people, I just sit there and repeat, "sure, sure..." not really sure why exactly, sometimes I don't agree yet thats what I say. I guess it has to do with keeping my opinion to myself, sometimes you are better just to agree with the statement. I think by far the most absurd thing i still do is laugh hysterically whenever I hear someone say the word do do twice in a row in a sentence. It happens more often then one would expect. I actually had it happen in a serious business meeting and suffice it to say it wasn't so serious after that.
I asked the leading Jim Carey expert in my area, (my husband). He says "Ace Ventura" is the movie you're thinking of. It made me wonder if I pick up catchy lines from tv and movies. At first, I couldn't think of any. Until the Movie "Superstar" came to mind. She screams a her grandmother, "YOU'RE HORRIBLE" YOU'RE HORRIBLE". I scream that at my husband whenever he won't let me have something ridiculously expensive that we could never possibly afford. And that's when it occurred to me... I DO do it.
I remember my Grandmother would never allow us to say dadburnit, or anything similar, because she thought it came too close to swearing. LOL Once when she was angry, I heard her say, "oh foot!" I laughed so hard! Hogwash was a favorite of hers, it sounded better than bullsh**.
When I was at university, a few of us used to amuse ourselves by using archaic oaths, so we used to say things like "Gadzooks" "'sblood" and "Egad". "Heavens to Murgatroid" was another favourite, emanating (or so I believe) from the 1960s cartoon cat, Snagglepuss.
One of my father's favorite terms when he was frustrated was to go I'm Telling You. Oef course he wasn't telling us anything but that he was upset. He did also use dammit on occasion as well when he lost his temper. As for my mother she had one word that let us know she wasn't happy with us, but the look she gave us along with it were enough to get us in line. That word was Now, and that was usually all it took. No losing her temper, no yelling at us jut the word now, along with our name got us to know she meant business.
I had a gal pal from Georgia once. She asked me what I wanted for lunch. Told her I wanted some whistle berries. "What the h**l's whistle berries"? She asked. "Beans", I answered.
My best guess would be that Jeepers Creepers is yet another word that was invented to give the idea of, but without actually using God's name in vain. The first letters of the words being J and C, it is used in the same way that someone might use "Jesus Christ" as an epithet. It is sort of a family friendly curse word, I think. Okay - OK I haven't come across "Oakaly Doakoley," but I'm sure the reference is to "Okay" or "OK," whose own origins are not immediately intuitive, although the word or the abbreviation have been in use for over a hundred years. Some attributed it to the illiteracy displayed by Andrew Jackson whom, it was said, wrote "O.K." as an abbreviation for "Oll Korrect." Others believed that it was a misreading of the initials "O.R." meaning "Order Recorded," indicating the official approval of a document. Others believed that it was a rendering of the Choctaw "okey," which meant "it is so." In the July 19, 1941 issue of the Saturday Review of Literature, Allen Walker reported on his research into the origins of the word, in an article entitled The Evidence of an O.K. He traced its origins to 1840, finding its first published appearance in New York publication, New Era, published on March 23. The reference was to a political organization supporting Martin Van Buren's reelection campaign. The members of his campaign committee called themselves the "Democratic O.K. Club," taking the initials from "Old Kinderhook," a title bestowed on Van Buren from the name of the Hudson Valley village of Kinderhook, where he was born. The initials were used during the campaign as a rallying cry. According to a March 28, 1840 New York Herald news story, the cry was used by Van Buren supporters in a raid upon a meeting of an opposition Whig party meeting the previous evening. The initials caught on, and were later turned into a word, that has been in use ever since, to refer to something that is approved.
In Michael Quinion's excellent book, Port Out, Starboard Home, one of the many words and phrases he considers is "OK". He relates that the first recorded use was in the Boston Morning Post on 23rd March 1839 in a report about the Anti-Bell Ringing Society (really). This is tied in to the "oll korrect" theory that Ken mentioned above. It seems there was a craze for humorous misspellings at the time. It was then picked up by the Van Buren people the following year.