Aminced oath is aeuphemistic expression formed by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of aprofane,blasphemous, ortaboo word or phrase to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics. An example is "gosh" for "God",[1] orfudge forfuck.[2]
Many languages have such expressions. In the English language, nearly all profanities have minced variants.[3]
Common methods of forming a minced oath arerhyme andalliteration. Thus the wordbloody can becomeblooming, orruddy.[3] Alliterative minced oaths such asdarn fordamn allow a speaker to begin to say the prohibited word and then change to a more acceptable expression.[4] Inrhyming slang, rhyming euphemisms are often truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated;prick becameHampton Wick and then simplyHampton. Another well-known example is "cunt" rhyming with "Berkeley Hunt", which was subsequently abbreviated to "berk". Alliteration can be combined withmetrical equivalence, as in the pseudo-blasphemous "Judas Priest", substituted for the blasphemous use of "Jesus Christ".[5]
Minced oaths can also be formed by shortening: e.g.,b forbloody orf forfuck.[3] Sometimes words borrowed from other languages become minced oaths; for example,poppycock comes from the Dutchpappe kak, meaning 'soft dung'.[6] The minced oathblank is an ironic reference to the dashes that are sometimes used to replace profanities in print.[7] It goes back at least to 1854, whenCuthbert Bede wrote "I wouldn't give a blank for such a blank blank. I'm blank, if he doesn't look as if he'd swallowed a blank codfish." By the 1880s, it had given rise to the derived formsblanked andblankety,[8] which combined gave the name of the long-running British TV quiz showBlankety Blank. In the same way,bleep arose from the use ofa tone to mask profanities on radio.[7]
The Cretan kingRhadamanthus is said to have forbidden his subjects to swear by the gods, suggesting that they instead swear by the ram, the goose or theplane tree.Socrates favored the "Rhadamanthine" oath "by the dog", with "the dog" often interpreted as referring to the bright "Dog Star",i.e.,Sirius.Aristophanes mentions that people used to swear by birds instead of by the gods, adding that the soothsayer Lampon still swears by the goose "whenever he's going to cheat you".[9] Since no god was called upon, Lampon may have considered this oath safe to break.[10]
Michael V. Fox says there are minced oaths in the Bible: the Hebrew wordsṣᵉba’ot 'gazelles' and’aylot haśśadeh 'wild does' (Sg 2:7) are circumlocutions for titles of God, the first for either(’elohey) ṣᵉba’ot '(God of) Hosts' or(YHWH) ṣᵉba’ot '(Yahweh is) Armies' and the second for’el šadday 'El Shaddai'.[11] TheNew English Translation footnotes dispute this interpretation of the Hebrew.
The use of minced oaths in English dates back at least to the 14th century, when "gog" and "kokk", both euphemisms for God, were in use. Other early minced oaths include"Gis" or "Jis" for Jesus (1528).[12]
LateElizabethan drama contains a profusion of minced oaths, probably due toPuritan opposition to swearing. Seven new minced oaths are first recorded between 1598 and 1602, including'sblood for "By God's blood" fromShakespeare, 'slight for "God's light" fromBen Jonson, and 'snails for "God's nails" from the historian John Hayward. Swearing on stage was officially banned by theAct to Restrain Abuses of Players in 1606, and a general ban on swearing followed in 1623.[13] Other examples from the 1650s included'slid for "By God's eyelid" (1598),'sfoot for "By God's foot" (1602), andgadzooks for "By God's hooks" (referring to thenails onChrist's cross). In the late 17th century,egad meantoh God,[14] andods bodikins for "By God'sbodkins [i.e.nail]s" in 1709.[15]
In some cases the original meanings of these minced oaths were forgotten; the oath'struth (By God's truth) came to be spelledstrewth. The oathZounds and relatedWounds changed pronunciation in theGreat Vowel Shift, but the normal wordwound did not (at least not in RP), so that they no longer sound like their original meaning of "By God's wounds".[16]
Although minced oaths are not as strong as the expressions from which they derive, some audiences may still find them offensive. One writer in 1550 considered "idle oaths" like "by cocke" (by God), "by the cross of the mouse foot", and "by Saint Chicken" to be "most abominable blasphemy".[17] The minced oaths "'sblood" and "zounds" were omitted from theFolio edition ofShakespeare's playOthello, probably as a result ofPuritan-influenced censorship.[18] In 1941, aUnited States federal judge threatened a lawyer withcontempt of court for using the word "darn".[19]Zounds may sound amusing and archaic to the modern ear,[20] yet as late as 1984 the columnistJames J. Kilpatrick recalled that "some years ago", after using it in print, he had received complaints that it was blasphemous because of its origin as "God's wounds".[21] (He had written an article entitled "Zounds! IsReagan Mad?" in theSpartanburg Herald for 12 June 1973,[22] and also used "zounds" in June 1970.)[23]
It is common to find minced oaths in literature and media. Writers sometimes face the problem of portraying characters who swear and often include minced oaths instead ofprofanity in their writing so that they will not offend audiences or incurcensorship. One example isThe Naked and the Dead, where publishers required authorNorman Mailer to use the minced oath "fug" over his objections.[24]Somerset Maugham referred to this problem in his novelThe Moon and Sixpence (1919), in which the narrator explained that "Strickland, according to Captain Nichols, did not use exactly the words I have given, but since this book is meant for family reading, I thought it better—at the expense of truth—to put into his mouth language familiar to the domestic circle".[25]
J. R. R. Tolkien pretends a similar mincing of profanity inThe Lord of the Rings, stating in Appendix F of the novel: "But Orcs and Trolls spoke as they would, without love of words or things; and their language was actually more degraded and filthy than I have shown it. I do not suppose that any will wish for a closer rendering, though models are easy to find."[26]
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