The Light Oath “Criminently”

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Megan Copecy from Arvada, Colorado.

Hello, Megan. How you doing?

I’m good. How are you guys?

All right. Welcome to the show.

What would you like to talk with us about?

I’m originally from Northwest Missouri.

My husband is from England, and sometimes, you know, we have, he says things, I say things, we’re like, what is that?

So I said something, yeah, and I said, crime and niddly.

And I started to think, what in the world does that even mean?

Is that something just my family says?

I tried to Google it.

How do you even spell that?

I have no clue.

So I was wondering if you know the spelling, where it comes from, you know, anything like that.

What was happening when you said that?

What was going on?

Everything related to the pandemic and quarantine.

You know, who knows?

I’ve got a four-and-a-half-year-old son.

Probably he did something that frustrated me.

Oh, crime and deadly.

I wouldn’t say it to him.

But, you know.

Oh, so something unusual.

It was kind of like a mild, a safe oath then.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, like I was annoyed at something.

So, yeah, oh, crime and idly.

And then, you know, I’m almost 42.

It sounds like something that like an 85-year-old says.

You’re precocious.

You’re ahead of your age group.

Yes.

Megan, it’s interesting that you had difficulty spelling it.

It sounds like you’ve got a couple of Ds in there, right?

D’s in dog, crimenidly. Is that the way you’re saying it? Yeah. Well, that’s a new one on me.

Because there are lots of different spellings of this term, but usually it has a T in it.

And there are lots of different versions of it, like crimenitly, crimenitly, crimenitly,

Crimenitly, crimenitly. And then your version, which is new to me, crimenidly. But all of those,

All of those are what we call a minced oath, which is a way of saying something without really saying it.

And in this case, it’s a way of saying Christ or Christ Almighty without really saying that.

And, you know, that’s really funny because I have been, you know, again, pandemic annoyances, etc.

I have been saying Christ Almighty a lot.

Oh, really?

Yes.

And then one day I said crimenidly, and I thought, I wonder if that is a contraction of that.

So that really makes sense.

Yeah.

Is it throughout the Midwest?

Somebody said, oh, in Illinois, no, Indiana, we say that as well.

Well, another version, crimenly, is mainly found in the North and the North Midlands and the West.

Crimenly, you don’t hear it a lot in the South.

I know that much.

Yeah, even the American South tends to, even the minced oaths tend to be less common in the American South just through tradition of not swearing and even mild swears in polite company.

Oh, interesting.

I think I know 12 different spellings for this, maybe 13.

There are a lot, yeah.

There are a lot, yeah.

It’s transmitted ear to mouth and not usually on paper, so people don’t know how to spell it, so when they do, it’s all over the place.

Yeah, did you know Megan’s with the D’s in there?

No, that one I don’t have.

I have to put that down.

I found it, though, in newspaper comics back to the 1920s.

That’s one of the first places I’ve seen it, the earliest places I’ve seen it.

Criminently.

Criminently, yeah.

So how would I spell it?

What would be a spelling that I could actually Google?

You could Google C-R-I-M-A-N-E-T-L-Y, Criminently.

You’ll find a lot if you just.

And then you’ll start going down the rabbit hole like we do.

You will find people say it as crime in Italy, like the country.

Oh, yeah, that’s another one.

So Google that, too.

I love that.

Thank you for your call.

Call us again sometime.

Thank you so much.

All right, take care.

Be well.

Thanks, Megan.

Bye-bye.

Thanks, bye.

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