The exclamation “crime in Italy” is a variation of criminently, or criminy, both euphemisms for Christ. This is part of a complete episode.
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The exclamation “crime in Italy” is a variation of criminently, or criminy, both euphemisms for Christ. This is part of a complete episode.
A Winter Dictionary (Bookshop|Amazon) by Paul Anthony Jones includes some words to lift your spirits. The verb whicken involves the lengthening of days in springtime, a variant of quicken, meaning “come to life.” Another word, breard, is...
Rosalind from Montgomery, Alabama, says her mother used to scold her for acting like a starnadle fool. The more common version of this term is starnated fool, a term that appears particular to Black English, and appears in the work of such writers...
Just wanted to say I picked this expression up from watching the Daniel Boone TV show in the 1960s. Daniel’s son, Israel, used to say it all the time. I was about Israel’s on-screen age at the time so I identified with him. He didn’t enunciate the ‘a’ in Italy but I thought that was just a woodsman’s frugality with syllables. It never occurred to me he wasn’t actually saying, “Crime In Italy!” or as I imagined it would have been written, Crime In It’ly!