Strewthisms : A Little Dictionary of English Exclamations and Curses as Religious Euphemisms

Extraordinarily enough, this year, I realise, marks twenty years since the
first submission of my ‘Strewthisms’ proposal to Penguin Reference Books
in the Strand. It was rejected. Rooting through a file, I stumbled across
this provisional list and was compelled (as a completist) to pick over the
bones of a forgotten unfinished project. In my own case, the historical
context is a mid-20th Century English childhood and the strictures of
devout – not to say priggish – British publishers in their avoidance
of profanities in the slang of schoolgirl heroines and schoolboy heroes
animating the pages of Girl and The Eagle comics, whose adventures were
a direct corrective to the violent American comics that had landed on our
shores as ships’ ballast to be branded a baleful influence coarsening young
minds. As I nostalgically wrote (Dispossession, 2008, Salt): ‘After so many
bitter winters of post war rationing, we’d sensed the dark clouds lifting to
herald a new dawn of bright comic books and pink bubble gum.’ Ironical,
perhaps, to remember that the Rev. Chad Varah CH CBE, co-founder of
The Eagle (wholesome comic for a new dawn of pure-minded New
Elizabethans) was more notably the founder of the Samaritans, the world’s
first crisis hotline to provide support to those contemplating suicide.

All fired
Begorrah
Begob
Bejasus
Blasted
Bloody
By Gad
By Goles
By Golly
By Jay
By Jingo
By Lakin (By Our Lady)
By Heck
Chriggle
Christopher
Christopher Columbus
Consarn
Cor Lumme
Crikey
Crimble
Crimbo
Cripes
Dadblamed
Dadblasted
Dadburned
Daddrat
Dadrot
Dagnab
Danged
Darn
Darnation
Dashed
Dern
Deuced
Dingbust
Doggone
Drat
’Eck as like
Egad
For the love of Mike
Gad
Gadzooks
Gadso
Gadswoons
Gard
Garn
Gee
Gee Whiz
Gemini (O Jesu Domini)
Glory be to Pete
Go to Ecky
Godblimey
Goldanged
Goldarn
Goldarnit
Golding
Golly
Good Christmas
Gorblimey
Gosh
Goshdarn
Have a Happy
Heck
Him Below
Holy Mackerel
Holy Smoke
I’ll be blowed
I’ll be darned
I’m dashed
Jeanie Mac!
(An expression roughly equivalent to the quite common formula
‘Jesus, Mary, Joseph and all the Holy Martyrs!’,
avoiding use the Lord’s name taken in vain.)
Jeese
Jeez
Jee Willikins
Jee Whiskers
Jeepers
Jeepers Creepers
Jiminy (O Jesu Domini)
Jiminy Crickets
Jings
Jumping Jehoshaphat
Kinnell
Land
Landsakes
Laws-a-me
Lawks
Lawksamussy (Lord Have Mercy)
Lor
Lordy Me
Lor Lummy
Lord Lovikins
Lumme (Lord Love Me)
Marry
Marry Come Up
Mother O’Murphy (Mother of Mercy)
My Sainted Aunt
Merry Crimble
Nobodaddy
Od saves
Od’s bobs
Od’s body
Od’s bodikins
Od’s pitikins
Od rod ’em
Od’s zounds
Oh Glory!
Old Nick
Ruddy
Sakes Alive
Snakes Alive
Save Us
’Sbobs
’Sbodikins
’Selp
’Sflesh
’Sfoot
’Slife
Strewth (God’s Truth)
Swelp
Swelpme
Swelpme Bob
Swop me Bob
Swop me Bod
Tarnation (even ‘What in Carnation?’)
Tarnation take me
The Man Upstairs
The Ould Fella
Wouns
What the Deuce
What the Dickens
Xmas
’Zbloud
’Zblud
’Z’death
Zoodikers
Zoonters
Zounds

• 

A Moral Conundrum for Puritans:

Does a euphemism become no less a profanity when it’s translated in one’s head?

 

(And, yes, of course – for crying out loud! – this list of Strewthisms is no way near complete!)

 

PS. I grew up in the early Atomic Age when King Charles III, as a schoolboy, was heard to say ‘Blast!’ and was widely condemned by the British Press.  

 
•

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. Within these disciplines Eisner’s fictions seek to explore variant literary forms derived from psychotherapy and criminology to trace the traumas of characters in extremis. Compulsive recurring sub-themes in her narratives examine sibling rivalry, rivalrous cousinhood, pathological imposture, financial chicanery, and the effects of non-familial male pheromones on pubescence, 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 

and A Bad Case (2014)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

 

 

 

Lament of a Girl Led Astray (score from Sister Morphine).

Put a tenner on the table as yer leavin’,

Put a tenner on the table

                                          won’tcha, dear.

Put a tenner on the table.

                                         if yer love me,

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live . . . 

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live . . . 

’Cos a girl ’as gotta live on more than

cold and bitter beer.

For many years, I admit, yes, we’d conducted a sort of meretricious relationship, which had branded me, I suppose, as a species of ‘kept woman’, for there was a lighthearted understanding that we should assist each other financially from time to time, when low on funds.

        Hence, when Douglas stole from the warmth of my bed in the small hours, I would often run to the piano to vocalise my penniless state in a patter song of my own devising . . . 

        The mock pathos of my Lament of a Girl Led Astray and jangling honky-tonk beerhall accompaniment had generally been productive of more than a tenner.

        Then, a change fell upon all things, when, in the light of one exceedingly feeble dawn, he confessed he was leaving me for a younger, more provident woman.

        ‘After traipsing after you all these years! You . . . you . . .’ I stuttered, quite beside myself with anger. ‘You . . . you . . .’ 

        Douglas turned slowly at the threshold. 

        ‘Well?’  There was a peculiar twist to his lips as if he were pleased to be hurting me.

‘You . . . you . . . bally bastard!’ I finally managed weakly.

        He gave a derisive little laugh and slammed the door.

        ‘I don’t care a blind fig who she is,’ I shouted after him senselessly, I was so angry, ‘or a brass farthing for your petty fornications!’

        Even now, his desertion, in retrospect – as I gazed in a reverie at the river’s oozy bed – prompted a bitter taste in my mouth; his laughter had simply added wormwood to gall.

Dispossession, Page 319, Sister Morphine (2008).

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Catherine Eisner believes passionately in plot-driven suspense fiction, a devotion to literary craft that draws on studies in psychoanalytical criminology and psychoactive pharmacology to explore the dark side of motivation, and ignite plot twists with unexpected outcomes. 

see Eisner’s Sister Morphine (2008)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/sister-morphine.html

and Listen Close to Me (2011)
http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/published-this-autumn-listen-close-to.html 
and A Bad Case (2015)

http://catherineeisnerfrance.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/a-bad-case-and-other-adventures-of.html

Christina James: The Telling Detail of Her Panoptic Vision. (In the Family.)

The art of the ‘police procedural fiction’ is supremely challenging and writers who succeed in transmuting the sheer slog of evidence-gathering – often, in truth, months of drudging unproductive investigations – into a riveting dramatic narrative commanding the reader’s intense empathic identification with both the protagonists and antagonists are very rare indeed. One thinks of Thomas Harris or James Ellroy or P. D. James as preeminent in the expression of the verisimilitude of true crime detection characterised by breathless suspense.
http://www.saltpublishing.com/products/in-the-family-9781907773242

Rara Avis.

Such a rara avis is Christina James, whose crime novel In the Family (the welcome debut of her Detective Inspector Yates series) demonstrates her deft assurance in sifting the ambiguities of subjective and objective reality, in the personal witness of suspects and detectives alike, as one would expect from the incident room of a by-the-book evidence-based police investigation . . . so, in James’s unique narrative diction for documenting the progress of this baffling multiple murder case, you’ll find style is form and form is style, in every sense of the term ‘form’, particularly. (Felon’s cant included).

It follows, then, that James has borrowed not a little of her unfussy, factual, panoptic narratives from the approved style and disciplines of first-person police incident reporting, prioritised as: Immediate impression of the crime scene faithfully rendered; Raw, direct, undoctored quotation of witness statements; An abundance of minutiae so no specific detail escapes the observer's notice (who knows what observations are crucial to the case?); Concise descriptive clarity to avoid misinterpretation of the report by alert critical readers; Hearsay reported as hearsay, not as evidential fact; Avoidance of over-legalistic or technical terms in favour of to-the-point, fact-based reporting; Honesty in retelling events, even if they reflect badly on the investigator's handling of the case (writing an untrue account may jeopardise the investigation later, or challenge the credulousness of the reader!) to name the principal guidelines observed; nor does the frequency of coppers’ regulation tea breaks pass unnoticed.

So here, exhibited by In the Family, is a triumph of documentary viscerality to relish . . . from the very start you feel you are right there, actively present at the inciting incident (a body in a shallow grave off a motorway slip road) from which the tentacles of the investigation proliferate.

‘Ars est celare artem . . . you might find it useful not to forget that,’ an expert witness reminds us on page 179. And, certainly, James, like the murder suspect of her creation, demonstrates the truism that it takes true art to conceal art and induce in us (and the investigation team) the suspension of disbelief. 

To this end characterisation and mood are augmented by almost preternaturally vivid and palpable evocations of fast-moving action, a super-reality summoned by well-drawn characters realised with the crispest of strokes: An eminent criminal psychologist possesses the ‘elegant angularity of a whippet’; a school’s ‘sea-green thick-rimmed cups’ are remembered from parents’ evenings; fingernails ‘bitten to the quick . . . varnished pillarbox red’; ‘She was already weary of playing hostess to his curmudgeonliness.’ [A Flaubertian sentence of subtle shades and texture!]; ‘She rolled her eyes at him. [It occurred to the inspector] she looked a bit like a mad dray horse herself’; ‘. . . the tiny cockloft of an office . . .’; ‘. . . he indicated some half-rotted apples on the ground.’; ‘. . . ten chocolate ginger biscuits carefully set out in an overlapping circle on a plate.’; ‘He was still loath to invest in proper toilet paper: there was a store of the squares of tissue in which oranges had been wrapped . . .’; ‘. . . the teacup slid a few inches across her slippery pale blue nylon overall.’; ‘. . . she was wearing a crimplene skirt of a curious yellow ochre hue . . . Rather incongruously, her feet were shod in scarlet leather moccasins.’ 

This word-painting with a purpose is of the highest order.

Parricidal Murderesses.

But more than this, our interest is centred on James's entirely novel treatment of avarice as a kind of criminal pathology, recalling the sociopathic manipulative behaviour of parricidal murderesses motivated wholly by greed for insurance payouts or inheritances, such as the notorious Mary Ann Cotton (between 1857 and 1872 she poisoned three husbands, her mother, a lover, eight of her own children, and seven stepchildren) and sisters Catherine Flannagan and Margaret Higgins (executed 1883) for poisoning family members and friends for small insurance settlements; and, more evocatively, from my own deepest darkest Sussex, Mary Ann Geering, hanged from the scaffold at Lewes prison in 1849 for the poisoning of her husband and two sons to gain death and sickness benefits from a Friendly Society, sums described by the defence counsel as so trifling that the jury could not impute so grave a crime to so small a motive.

It is the re-emergence of this sinister kind of cupidity – the kind that covets easy money and abandons received moral codes – which we find so troubling in the 21st century, especially when the motives for such crimes are complicated by familial duress . . . or even influenced by the secret emotional pressures of incestuous consanguinity.

‘It’s brass that interests us,’ one interlocutor of the prime suspect pronounces and one learns that the prime suspect does not disavow her complicity with this view. This is dangerous territory for moralists because, after all, covetousness is numbered among the seven cardinal sins and among the ten commandments so to relabel a ‘sin’ as a ‘pathology’ smacks of fashionable psychosociological revisionism. 

Panoptic 360-degree Neo-docu-novel.

Nevertheless, Christina James – from the 360-degree panoptic vantage of her neo-docu-novel and with the skill of a forensic pathologist – can be said to be reinventing for our times the ‘Fortune-Hunting’ novel of the 19th century (was their any other kind in the Age of Materialism?), wherein the hero and heroine in want of a fortune are invariably named Sterling and Libra.

Please be assured, discerning reader, In the Family is truly an unputdownable novel of disturbingly (and determinedly) acquisitive criminals viewed from the Panopticon of James’s infallible authorial omnipresence by whom the very hairs on the heads of her characters are numbered . . . because, as all lovers of classic detective fiction are aware, it’s the telling detail that counts . . . and here, throughout the chase, you may be certain it is the telling detail that’s spot on.

Listen Close to Me

Listen Close to Me

PUBLISHER’S ANNOUNCEMENT :
Subtitled Hidden Lives of Love, Madness, Murder, Loss and Deception, this new collection by Catherine Eisner traces often with darkest black humour the misadventures and behavioural tics of women driven by bizarre and sometimes criminal compulsions. An asexual niece becomes the love interest of her erotica-collecting uncle; the mistress of an army Intelligence Officer assumes the modus operandi of a spy to outwit her lover; a cat-obsessed wife of a commodities broker is suckered into a human-trafficking scam in Hong Kong; an eighteen-year-old governess becomes a suspect in a notorious case of serial murder and begins to harbour suspicions about the budding sociopath in her charge, a sinister nine-year-old boy [extract below]. These are tales that probe the intimate lives and crimes of unreliable narrators to prompt disturbing confidences told in voices from the sidelines that we wouldn’t normally hear.

... A meticulous recorder of behaviour, pitch-perfect on accents and the faultlines between class, sex and age, Eisner imbues each account with an unsettling verisimilitude that reaches its peak in “An Unreined Mind”. An 18-year-old governess struggles to comprehend her nine-year-old charge ... on an isolated country estate ... When a series of murders begins, the governess falls under suspicion … Eisner shows the workings of a highly original mind.
(Review by Cathi Unsworth in The Guardian.)

... entertaining and finely spiced …
(Times Literary Supplement)

Extraordinary writing. Mesmeric reading.
(Ambit magazine)

Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Salt Publishing (15 Sep 2011)
ISBN-10: 184471831X
ISBN-13: 978-1844718313


Extract from An Unreined Mind

Seeing him again after all these years, as he was led out of the Crown courtroom after the verdict, flanked by an armed police escort, I was somehow neither surprised by his notoriety nor amazed by my own prophecy fulfilled.
Because, after all, hadn’t his own governess murmured to herself with a shudder, when Skinner was no more than nine years old, ‘Well, that settles his place in history!’ as the boy perched on the wall of his reclusive animals’ graveyard and owlishly watched the hay rick burn while his squealing mice suffocated in their cages.
‘If it’s nae ane thing efter anither wi’ tha’ wickit wee daftie,’ the housekeeper squawked, wildly beckoning to me before the wind could carry the smoke and smuts to descend on her washing line.
Not that Nessie could hear those caged death throes from the haystack. She was stone deaf, and her plangent speech was oddly intonated.
‘Uch! Tha’ wretchit Pish-a-Bed cannae be dealt wi’!’ she screeched, pointing to indissoluble traces of yellowish stains on one draw-sheet.
I helped her fold the batch of single flannelette sheets the boy had brought back from boarding school; each one carried a woven name-tape:

H. L. Skinner.

Looking down at us from that distant grave-mound, the boy was now half hidden behind the iron-fenced enclosure, hands clutched upon railings, insolently sucking a sweet.
‘A’wa wi’ ye!’ Nessie screeched, and brandished a raw fist. ‘Back tae the stank ye wis spawned in! Behind bars! That’s whaur ye belong!’
Of course, whenever criminologists cite Skinner’s name, those gruesome serial killings over three decades will always come to mind; a notoriety that will be forever associated with the Skinner Principle (SP5), the five well-known signifiers of homicidal sociopathy which even today socio-psychologists still consider to be the essential ‘quintad’ for identifying in children first-rank personality disorders predictive of future criminal behaviour.
‘Cruikit weans oot o’ thair raison!’
For Nessie Macmurtagher, such wilful children were unmistakable. And any child so labelled – in her own maledictory words – was likely to be possessed by ‘a demon soul blacker than the Earl of Hell’s waistkit.’
As you’re no doubt aware, these components of the SP5 homicidal sociopathic personality consist of Enuresis (bedwetting), Pyromania (firesetting), Zoosadism (torturing pets and small animals), Necromania (a morbid attraction to dead bodies), and Zootomy (dissection of animal cadavers).
‘Well, that settles his place in history!’ I whispered to myself for, indeed, it was I who was that hired governess or, rather, since at that time I was myself little more than twice the boy’s age, it would be truthfuller to describe the eighteen-year-old factotum who drifted into Skinner’s warped childhood at that critical moment in his life as a sort of immature Universal Aunt.

•

It happened like this.
On the chill wintry evening I consider the Opening Act of the Skinner morality play – in fact, it was the first day of the boy’s Christmas holidays – I was ascending that very same grave-mound in search of my truant charge when, through the gloom, I discerned a bulky figure . . .