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44-444: " Great Scott! " is an interjection of surprise, amazement, or dismay. It is a distinctive exclamation, popular in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, and now considered dated. It originated as a minced oath , historically associated with two specific "Scotts": Scottish author Sir Walter Scott and, later, US general Winfield Scott . It is a catchphrase of the fictional scientist Emmett "Doc" Brown from

88-435: A United States federal judge threatened a lawyer with contempt of court for using the word "darn". Zounds may sound amusing and archaic to the modern ear, yet as late as 1984 the columnist James 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". (He had written an article entitled "Zounds! Is Reagan Mad?" in

132-441: 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 forms blanked and blankety , which combined gave the name of the long-running British TV quiz show Blankety Blank . In the same way, bleep arose from the use of a tone to mask profanities on radio. The Cretan king Rhadamanthus is said to have forbidden his subjects to swear by

176-566: A cheerful, bikini-clad spokeswoman delivers the ad's call-to-action by saying "... so where the bloody hell are you? "). In the UK the BACC required that a modified version of the ad be shown in the United Kingdom, without the word "bloody". In May 2006 the UK's Advertising Standards Authority ruled that the word bloody was not an inappropriate marketing tool and the original version of the ad

220-419: A more acceptable expression. In rhyming slang , rhyming euphemisms are often truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated; prick became Hampton Wick and then simply Hampton . Another well-known example is " cunt " rhyming with " Berkeley Hunt ", which was subsequently abbreviated to "berk". Alliteration can be combined with metrical equivalence, as in the pseudo-blasphemous " Judas Priest ", substituted for

264-570: A similar mincing of profanity in The 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." bloody Bloody , as an adjective or adverb ,

308-654: A sinking boat the Walter Scott . John William De Forest , in Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty (1867) reports the exclamation as referring to Winfield Scott , general‑in‑chief of the U.S. Army from 1841 to 1861: I follow General Scott. No Virginian need be ashamed to follow old Fuss and Feathers. We used to swear by him in the army. Great Scott! the fellows said. The general, known to his troops as Old Fuss and Feathers, weighed 300 pounds (21 stone or 136 kg) in his later years and

352-544: A verbal representation of a dash , is used as a euphemism for a variety of "bad" words. Use of bloody as an adverbial or generic intensifier is to be distinguished from its fixed use in the expressions "bloody murder" and "bloody hell". In "bloody murder", it has the original sense of an adjective used literally. The King James Version of the Bible frequently uses bloody as an adjective in reference to bloodshed or violent crime, as in "bloody crimes" (Ezekiel 22:2), "Woe to

396-529: Is an expletive attributive commonly used in British English , Irish English , and Australian English ; it is also present in Canadian English , Indian English , Malaysian/Singaporean English , Hawaiian English , South African English , and a number of other Commonwealth of nations. It has been used as an intensive since at least the 1670s. Considered respectable until about 1750, it

440-457: Is an intensifier . It is used in both explicit and non-explicit ways. It also spread to Afrikaans as "bloedige" and is popular amongst many citizens in the country. It is also used by minors and is not considered to be offensive. The term is also frequently used as a mild expletive or an intensifier in India. Many substitutions were devised to convey the essence of

484-486: Is bloody passionate" in 1742). After about 1750 the word assumed more profane connotations. Johnson (1755) already calls it "very vulgar", and the original Oxford English Dictionary article of 1888 comments the word is "now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered 'a horrid word', on a par with obscene or profane language". On the opening night of George Bernard Shaw 's comedy Pygmalion in 1914, Mrs Patrick Campbell , in

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528-641: Is common in Shakespeare 's plays around the turn of the 17th century, and Jonathan Swift about 100 years later writes both "it grows by'r Lady cold" and "it was bloody hot walking to-day" suggesting that bloody and by'r Lady had become exchangeable generic intensifiers. However, Eric Partridge (1933) describes the supposed derivation of bloody as a further contraction of by'r lady as "phonetically implausible". According to Rawson's dictionary of Euphemisms (1995), attempts to derive bloody from minced oaths for "by our lady" or "God's blood" are based on

572-489: Is informally known as Great Scott . Minced oath Many languages have such expressions. In the English language, nearly all profanities have minced variants. Common methods of forming a minced oath are rhyme and alliteration . Thus the word bloody can become blooming , or ruddy . Alliterative minced oaths such as darn for damn allow a speaker to begin to say the prohibited word and then change to

616-410: Is seen by American audiences as a stereotypical marker of a British- or Irish-English speaker, without any significant obscene or profane connotations. Canadian English usage is similar to American English, but use as an expletive adverb may be considered slightly vulgar depending on the circumstances. Use of the adjective bloody as a profane intensifier predates the 18th century. Its ultimate origin

660-484: Is unclear, and several hypotheses have been suggested. It may be a direct loan of Dutch bloote , (modern spelling blote ) meaning entire , complete or pure , which was suggested by Ker (1837) to have been "transformed into bloody , in the consequently absurd phrases of bloody good , bloody bad , bloody thief , bloody angry , etc., where it simply implies completely, entirely, purely, very, truly, and has no relation to either blood or murder, except by corruption of

704-667: The Back to the Future franchise. It is frequently assumed that Great Scott! is a minced oath of some sort, Scott replacing God . The 2010 edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English labels the expression as "dated" and simply identifies it as an "arbitrary euphemism for 'Great God!'". Alternatively, it has been suggested that it may be a corruption of the South German and Austrian greeting Grüß Gott , although

748-616: The Spartanburg Herald for 12 June 1973, and also used "zounds" in June 1970.) 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 of profanity in their writing so that they will not offend audiences or incur censorship . One example is The Naked and the Dead , where publishers required author Norman Mailer to use

792-481: The 1961 film The Guns of Navarone the actor Richard Harris at one point says: "You can't even see the bloody cave, let alone the bloody guns. And anyway, we haven't got a bloody bomb big enough to smash that bloody rock ..." – but bloody was replaced with ruddy for British audiences of the time. The term bloody as an intensifier is now overall fairly rare in Canada , though still more common than in

836-603: 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). Late Elizabethan drama contains a profusion of minced oaths, probably due to Puritan opposition to swearing. Seven new minced oaths are first recorded between 1598 and 1602, including 'sblood for "By God's blood" from Shakespeare , 'slight for "God's light" from Ben Jonson , and 'snails for "God's nails" from

880-576: The United States. It is more commonly spoken in the Atlantic provinces , particularly Newfoundland and Labrador . It may be considered mildly vulgar depending on the circumstances. In Singapore , the word bloody is commonly used as a mild expletive in Singapore's colloquial English . The roots of this expletive derives from the influence and informal language British officers used during

924-428: The attempt to explain the word's extraordinary shock power in the 18th to 19th centuries, but they disregard that the earliest records of the word as an intensifier in the 17th to early 18th century do not reflect any taboo or profanity. It seems more likely, according to Rawson, that the taboo against the word arose secondarily, perhaps because of an association with menstruation . The Oxford English Dictionary prefers

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968-534: The blasphemous use of "Jesus Christ". Minced oaths can also be formed by shortening: e.g., b for bloody or f for fuck . Sometimes words borrowed from other languages become minced oaths; for example, poppycock comes from the Dutch pappe kak , meaning 'soft dung'. The minced oath blank is an ironic reference to the dashes that are sometimes used to replace profanities in print. It goes back at least to 1854, when Cuthbert Bede wrote "I wouldn't give

1012-581: The bloody city" (Ezekiel 24:6, Nahum 3:1). "bloody men" (26:9, Psalms 59:2, 139:19), etc. The expression of "bloody murder" goes back to at least Elizabethan English, as in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus (c. 1591), "bloody murder or detested rape". The expression "scream bloody murder" (in the figurative or desemanticised sense of "to loudly object to something" attested since c. 1860) is now considered American English, while in British English,

1056-651: The bloody hell are you? was banned on UK televisions and billboards as the term was still considered an expletive. The word as an expletive is seldom used in the United States of America . In the US the term is usually used when the intention is to mimic an Englishman. Because it is not perceived as profane in American English , "bloody" is not censored when used in American television and film, for example in

1100-626: The dealing and training of soldiers in the Singapore Volunteer Corps and the early days of the Singapore Armed Forces . When more Singaporeans were promoted officers within the Armed Forces, most new local officers applied similar training methods their former British officers had when they were cadets or trainees themselves. This includes some aspects of British Army lingo, like "bloody (something)". When

1144-692: The euphemistic "blue murder" had replaced "bloody murder" during the period of "bloody" being considered taboo. The expression "bloody hell " is now used as a general expression of surprise or as a general intensifier; e.g. "bloody hell" being used repeatedly in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (2001, PG Rating ). In March 2006 Australia 's national tourism commission, Tourism Australia , launched an advertising campaign targeted at potential visitors in several English-speaking countries. The ad sparked controversy because of its ending (in which

1188-480: 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". The minced oaths "'sblood" and "zounds" were omitted from the Folio edition of Shakespeare 's play Othello , probably as a result of Puritan -influenced censorship. In 1941,

1232-428: The gods, suggesting that they instead swear by the ram, the goose or the plane 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". Since no god

1276-610: The historian John Hayward. Swearing on stage was officially banned by the Act to Restrain Abuses of Players in 1606, and a general ban on swearing followed in 1623. Other examples from the 1650s included 'slid for "By God's eyelid" (1598), 'sfoot for "By God's foot" (1602), and gadzooks for "By God's hooks" (referring to the nails on Christ's cross ). In the late 17th century, egad meant oh God , and ods bodikins for "By God's bodkins [i.e. nail ]s" in 1709. In some cases

1320-488: The influence of Singapore English has spread. The use of "bloody" as a substitute for more explicit language increased with the popularity of British and Australian films and television shows aired on local television programmes. The term bloody in Singapore may not be considered explicit, but its usage is frowned upon in formal settings. The term is frequently used among South Africans in their colloquial English and it

1364-518: The meaning of the two expressions is totally different. An early reference to Sir Walter Scott as the "great Scott" is found in the poem "The Wars of Bathurst 1830" published in The Sydney Monitor on 27 October 1830, still during Scott's lifetime; the pertinent line reading "Unlike great Scott, who fell at Waterloo", in reference to Scott's poorly-received The Field of Waterloo . An explicit connection of Sir Walter Scott's name with

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1408-502: The minced oath "fug" over his objections. Somerset Maugham referred to this problem in his novel The 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". J. R. R. Tolkien pretends

1452-467: The newly elected Singapore government implemented compulsory conscription, all 18-year-old able bodied Singapore males had to undergo training within the Armed Forces. When National servicemen completed their service term, some brought the many expletives they picked up during their service into the civilian world and thus became a part of the common culture in the city state. The word "bloody" also managed to spread up north in neighbouring Malaysia, to where

1496-413: The oath, but with less offence; these included bleeding , bleaking , cruddy , smuddy , blinking , blooming , bally , woundy , flaming and ruddy . Publications such as newspapers, police reports, and so on may print b⸺y instead of the full profanity. A spoken language equivalent is blankety or, less frequently, blanked or blanky ; the spoken words are all variations of blank , which, as

1540-520: The original meanings of these minced oaths were forgotten; the oath 'struth ( By God's truth ) came to be spelled strewth . The oath Zounds and related Wounds changed pronunciation in the Great Vowel Shift , but the normal word wound did not (at least not in RP), so that they no longer sound like their original meaning of "By God's wounds". Although minced oaths are not as strong as

1584-685: The role of Eliza Doolittle, created a sensation with the line "Walk! Not bloody likely!" and this led to a fad for using "Pygmalion" itself as a pseudo-oath, as in "Not Pygmalion likely". Bloody has always been a very common part of Australian speech and has not been considered profane there for some time. . The word was dubbed "the Australian adjective" by The Bulletin on 18 August 1894. One Australian performer, Kevin Bloody Wilson , has even made it his middle name. Also in Australia,

1628-634: The then familiar exclamation is found in a poem published 15 August 1871, on the centenary anniversary of Scott's birth: Whose wild free charms, he chanted forth Great Scott! When shall we see thy like again? Great Scott! Mark Twain uses the phrase in some of his writing. The main character in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1889) repeatedly utters "great Scott" as an oath. Twain's disdain for Scott may be evident in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), where he names

1672-404: The theory that it arose from aristocratic rowdies known as "bloods", hence "bloody drunk" means "drunk as a blood". Until at least the early 18th century, the word was used innocuously. It was used as an intensifier without apparent implication of profanity by 18th-century authors such as Henry Fielding and Jonathan Swift ("It was bloody hot walking today" in 1713) and Samuel Richardson ("He

1716-516: The tune of " John Brown's Body ". In the July 1871 issue of The Galaxy , in the story "Overland", the expression is again used by author by J. W. DeForest: "Great—Scott!" he gasped in his stupefaction, using the name of the then commander-in-chief for an oath, as officers sometimes did in those days. A large basalt rock collected by astronaut David Scott on the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 1971

1760-413: The word bloody is frequently used as a verbal hyphen, or infix, correctly called tmesis as in "fanbloodytastic". In the 1940s an Australian divorce court judge held that "the word bloody is so common in modern parlance that it is not regarded as swearing". Meanwhile, Neville Chamberlain 's government was fining Britons for using the word in public. In 2007 an Australian advertising campaign So where

1804-566: The word." The word "blood" in Dutch and German is used as part of minced oaths , in abbreviation of expressions referring to "God's blood", i.e. the Passion or the Eucharist . Ernest Weekley (1921) relates English usage to imitation of purely intensive use of Dutch bloed and German Blut in the early modern period. A popularly reported theory suggested euphemistic derivation from the phrase by Our Lady . The contracted form by'r Lady

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1848-524: Was called upon, Lampon may have considered this oath safe to break. Michael V. Fox says there are minced oaths in the Bible: the Hebrew words ṣᵉba’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 '. The New English Translation footnotes dispute this interpretation of

1892-419: Was heavily tabooed during c. 1750–1920, considered equivalent to heavily obscene or profane speech. Public use continued to be seen as controversial until the 1960s, but the word has since become a comparatively mild expletive or intensifier. In American English , the word is used almost exclusively in its literal sense to describe something that is covered in blood; when used as an intensifier , it

1936-571: Was too fat to ride a horse. A May 1861 edition of The New York Times included the sentence: These gathering hosts of loyal freemen, under the command of the great SCOTT. The phrase appears in a 3 May 1864 diary entry by Private Robert Knox Sneden (later published as Eye of the Storm: a Civil War Odyssey ): "Great Scott," who would have thought that this would be the destiny of the Union Volunteer in 1861–2 while marching down Broadway to

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