The exclamation “crime in Italy” is a variation of criminently, or criminy, both euphemisms for Christ. This is part of a complete episode.
- Listen on:
- Apple
- Spotify
- iHeart Radio
- »
Leave a comment
1 comment
More from this show
If you start the phrase when in Rome… but don’t finish the sentence with do as the Romans do, or say birds of a feather… without adding flock together, you’re engaging in anapodoton, a term of rhetoric that refers to the...
There are many proposed origins for the exclamation of surprise, holy Toledo! But the most likely one involves not the city in Ohio, but instead Toledo, Spain, which has been a major religious center for centuries in the traditions of both Islam and...
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!