A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by deliberately misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profanity, blasphemy, or taboo word or phrase to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics. An example is "gosh" for "God",
Many languages have such expressions. In the English language, nearly all profanities have minced variants.[Hughes, 12.]
Formation
Common methods of forming a minced oath are
rhyme and
alliteration. Thus the word
can become , or
.
Alliterative minced oaths such as
darn for
damn allow a speaker to begin to say the prohibited word and then change to a more acceptable expression.
[Hughes, 7.] 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 the blasphemous use of "Jesus Christ".
Minced oaths can also be formed by shortening: e.g., b for bloody or f for fuck.[Hughes, 16–17.] The minced oath blank is an ironic reference to the dashes that are sometimes used to replace profanities in print.[ definition 12b for blank] 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 Bleep censor on radio.[Hughes, 18–19.]
History
The Cretan king
Rhadamanthus is said to have forbidden his subjects to swear by the gods, suggesting that they instead swear by the ram, the goose or the
Platanus.
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 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' () 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 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 for Jesus (1528).[Hughes, 13–15.]
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 for "By God's blood" from Shakespeare, 'slight for "God's light" from Ben Jonson, and 'snails for "God's nails" from 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.[Hugh Gazzard: An Act To Restrain Abuses Of Players (1606), in: The Review of English Studies, New Series, Vol. 61, No. 251 (September 2010), pp. 495-528, here p. 496] Other examples from the 1650s included 'slid for "By God's eyelid" (1598), for "By God's foot" (1602), and for "By God's hooks" (referring to the nails on Christian cross). In the late 17th century, meant oh God,[Hughes, 13.]
In some cases the original meanings of these minced oaths were forgotten; the oath ( By God's truth) came to be spelled . The oath 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".[Hughes, 103–105.]
Acceptability
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".
The minced oaths "'sblood" and "zounds" were omitted from the
First Folio edition of
Shakespeare's play
Othello, probably as a result of
Puritan-influenced censorship.
In 1941, a United States federal judge threatened a lawyer with contempt of court for using the word "darn".
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
Ronald Reagan Mad?" in the
Spartanburg Herald for 12 June 1973,
and also used "zounds" in June 1970.)
Literature and censorship
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 the minced oath "fug" over his objections.
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".
[Maugham, Somerset. The Moon and Sixpence, ch. 47; quoted in Hughes, 187.]
J. R. R. Tolkien pretends 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."
See also
Footnotes
Works cited
