Great Scott!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, Grant, this is Judy Hendricks. I’m calling from Graze Lake.

Why, hi, Judy. How you doing?

Hi, Judy.

I’m doing well. Hi, Martha.

Graze Lake where?

Illinois.

Oh, Illinois. Okay. You have a question for us?

Yes, I do.

All right.

It’s a weird one.

Okay, so I was driving down the highway, and I glanced up at this billboard on the side of the road, and I really have no idea what they were advertising, you know, possibly alcohol.

But it showed this picture of this big, burly, ruddy-looking Highlander in a full kilt with a sock dagger and a sporan and all that.

And it just said, Great Scott!

And I suddenly had one of those epithelial moments when I realized that I had never heard any other nationality used as an exclamation.

I’ve never had anyone run up to me and yell, Holy Haitians!

And so I came home and I looked it up to see if I could find out where that came from.

And all I could find was a reference to some Civil War general.

And even with that, I had no idea how it could have become an exclamation.

You know, it’s like, great, the guy was good on the field or something.

But then I had a neighbor, a guy named McTavish, who told me that he thought it was from Macbeth, that when people would talk about Macbeth, they would say when they thought you were acting a little strange, they would say you’re acting as crazy as the great Scott.

That’s Scott.

So that when you would say Great Scott, it meant something was really a little off kilter.

-huh.

Off kilter.

Kilter, oh, sorry. Pun unintended.

But you can keep it, that’s all right.

I was wondering if you guys had any info on this.

You know, if you look at the Oxford English Dictionary, it takes you back to 1885, saying that Great Scott is just a euphemism, one of those words that you use so that you don’t use the word God, you know.

Like instead of saying Great God, you would say Great Scott.

And it lists several like that.

Great Jehovah.

That sounds like a stretch to me.

Does it? It sounds like a stretch?

It sounds like a stretch.

I mean, God and Scott don’t sound all that much alike to me, but what do I know?

Well, but Jiminy doesn’t sound very much like Jesus either.

Jiminy Cricket, I can see.

Yeah, well, there are lots of those, like Great Caesar and Great Jehoshaphat.

Holy Zeus.

Holy Zeus.

Well, yeah, there’s sort of a euphemism, too.

But you mentioned the Civil War general, and I’m kind of leaning in that direction, Grant, although I don’t think we can nail it down for sure.

There was a great Civil War general, the guy who was commander-in-chief when the war broke out, named General Winfield Scott, and supposedly he was great in that he was quite heavy.

At one point, he weighed about 300 pounds.

Oh, so great as in massive.

Well, not only that, but he had a very high opinion of himself.

Winfield Scott did.

And some people called him fuss and feathers.

Oh, fuss and feathers.

Yeah, and there are references during the Civil War to soldiers swearing by their commander.

That is great, Scott.

Yeah, the earliest use, right?

Our colleague Barry Poppick has turned this up from 1867.

And somebody specifically talking about General Scott, that Scott with two Ts, says, how does it go?

We used to swear by him in the army.

Great Scott! With an exclamation mark, the fellows said.

So it’s an actual, that’s very specific there that they’re connecting the term to him.

And that is the earliest use that I know of in print.

Well, that’s interesting. Thank you.

Super.

Well, I’ll have to go back and break this to Mr. McTavish.

He’s going to be very upset.

Yeah, yeah.

Thanks a lot, guys.

Yeah, no problem.

Take care up there.

All right.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye, Judy.

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