Do you ever think about your curses?

[Dave.C.Robinson]

I sometimes use "Great Mothering Thor!"

I don't know why, but it works for me.

[Melisande]

One of my beloved Hubby's favourite cussings is "Great Ceasar's Ghost!". Don't know where he got it from, or what it might imply, but I love it.

[Dave.C.Robinson]

Originally Posted by Melisande

One of my beloved Hubby's favourite cussings is "Great Ceasar's Ghost!". Don't know where he got it from, or what it might imply, but I love it.

I don't know the origin, but Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet uses that a lot in Superman comics. It's become a character trademark.

[Lhun]

You know, what i really don't get is people using totally obvious substitutions instead of proper swearwords. If you think swearing is too offensive don't do it. Saying freck instead of fuck will make no difference at all. I mean, who the freck do you think you're kidding? Everyone knows exactly what you really meant to say. It's not as if a slighty different sounding syllable is going to fool anyone. And if you want to vent frustration in a non-offensive way just try a loud and healthy arrgh.
Even worse is substituting single letters in a forum. It's not like anyone can't see the word, an asterisk instead of a vowel is not good camouflage. Unless you're doing it to fool a word filter, which is a really impolite thing to do because you're either saying the mods of the forum are too stupid to figure out you just wrote a word they don't want to see or saying you don't respect their whish to not have certain language and are forcing them to edit you manually.

Anyway, i'm pretty goddamn atheistic and don't waste a seconds' thoughts on presumably blasphemous utterings. While i don't see any personal significance in saying, for example, "goddamn" it's a cultural expression that will get a certain meaning across. And if someone else is offended by it i don't really sympathize. Even if i wouldn't think of "blasphemous" as one of the most ridiculous ideas known to man, it'd still be my own soul i'd endanger and that's noone else's business.

[GeorgeK]

H = Horatio

[MumblingSage]

I'm under the impression that if you're cursing by the Christian god, that would be God, because it's a proper noun and thus should be capitalized.

[Ruv Draba]

Originally Posted by Rich

I remember reading something about the word "Golly!"--an innocent white expression--being a distortion of "God's Little Body!" Anybody here have any information on it?

From www.etymonline.com:
golly euphemism for God, first recorded 1775, in a source that refers to it as "a sort of jolly kind of oath, or asseveration much in use among our carters, & the lowest people."

Some that are more interesting, if sometimes archaic:

gosh 1757, altered pronunciation of God. Probably from by gosse (mid-16c.).
gee exclamation of surprise, 1895, euphemistic for Jesus. Form gee whiz is attested from 1885.
heck euphemistic alteration of hell, first recorded 1865.
marry (interj.) a common oath in the Middle Ages, c.1350, now obsolete, a corruption of the name of the Virgin Mary
zounds 1600, oath of surprise or anger, altered from (by) God's wounds!

One that I thought was religious (abbreviating "By Our Lady"), but which seems not to be:

bloody O.E. blodig, adj. from blod (see blood). It has been a British intens. swear word since at least 1676. Weekley relates it to the purely intensive use of the cognate Du. bloed, Ger. blut). But perhaps connected with bloods in the slang sense of "rowdy young aristocrats" (see blood) via expressions such as bloody drunk "as drunk as a blood." Partridge reports that it was "respectable" before c.1750, and it was used by Fielding and Swift, but heavily tabooed c.1750-c.1920, perhaps from imagined association with menstruation; Johnson calls it "very vulgar," and OED first edition writes of it, "now constantly in the mouths of the lowest classes, but by respectable people considered 'a horrid word', on par with obscene or profane language." Shaw shocked theatergoers when he put it in the mouth of Eliza Doolittle in "Pygmalion" (1914), and for a time the word was known euphemistically as "the Shavian adjective." It was avoided in print as late as 1936.

[Ziljon]

I have a friend that shouts "jeezle pete!" when he's angry.

I too, like someone mentioned earlier, love to say 'Dang!'

[Cranky]

My favorites are:

Goshdarnit.

God Bless America!

God Bless it!

Drat(ted).

Blast(ted).

Geeze O' Pete!

Dagnabit!

Farkin'.

And yes, I really do use these. Little pitchers and their enormous, always-listening ears, yanno.

[benbradley]

Originally Posted by Dave.C.Robinson

I don't know the origin, but Perry White, the editor of the Daily Planet uses that a lot in Superman comics. It's become a character trademark.

I remember him saying that in the '50's Superman TV series. I was, of course, watching reruns of it in the '70's, I'm not quite THAT old...

[DWSTXS]

I've always heard (but never used):

Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick!

[beachboy2]

do not like the way God is substituted for a swear word...even movies do this which is more offensive that usuing a swear word.