Jeezum Crow!

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Chris calling from Burlington, Vermont.

Hi, Chris, how you doing?

Good, how are you?

Excellent.

What’s going on?

Well, I got a phrase here that I used growing up here in Vermont.

It’s jesum crow.

Jesum crow.

When do you say it?

What’s happening when that’s going on, when that comes out of your mouth?

Usually, it could be something I use when maybe you’re angry or you’re surprised.

If it snowed overnight, you’ll wake up in the morning and look outside and go, geez, I’m crow, look at all that snow.

And do you ever say it when you’re angry, or is it more an exclamation of wonder?

Yeah, it’s definitely used in anger.

A lot of times used to substitute taking the Lord’s name in vain, if you will.

Right. There we go. You’re on a track there.

Yeah, and Chris, do you have any thoughts about how to spell it?

Is it one word, two words?

What I know is two words, and spell J-E-E-Z-U-M, and then crow.

Yeah, if you hadn’t said you were from Vermont, I was going to ask if you were from Vermont, because it’s a very common expression there and in northern New York.

And as far as we know, it’s a euphemism for saying Jesus Christ.

Yeah, it’s a minced oath. It’s like Jeepers Creepers or Jiminy Cricket.

Yeah, there are a lot of those exclamations that start with that J sound.

There’s an alternate spelling, which is, in my research, a little more common, J-E-S-U-M, but it’s the same, and it’s also from Vermont.

And they date back to, we find the first printed uses anyway, in the early 1950s.

I found one in 1953.

I have no doubt if I looked harder, I would find more earlier.

Yeah, but it kind of marks you from that area.

Yeah, yeah.

I grew up here, and it didn’t seem to be a peculiar phrase.

I moved out to Oregon and was working as an archaeologist and said it one day, and everybody looked at me like I was crazy.

Well, you may be.

Did you dig up something cool?

Yeah, we were looking for prehistoric Native American artifacts and found a pretty good-sized little arrowhead and said, geez, I’m crow, look at this, and everybody got silent and said, what did you say?

They thought this was some kind of obscure archaeological term, huh?

Yeah.

Yeah, it just means gee whiz, gee willikers.

And as Grant said, it’s a minced oath.

All right. Thanks for calling, Chris. Glad to help you.

Yeah, thank you. Have a great day.

All right. Take care.

Bye-bye.

You know, you did this speech recently where I loved it.

We had an audience full of people from around the country where you just started quizzing them and asking if they’d heard things like Jeeze and Crow.

And when they said, yes, I know that term, you would say, well, I know that you’re from Vermont and you’re from Maine and you’re from Wisconsin.

I was lucky with those guesses.

They were lucky, but their minds were blown.

But this is one of those things we talk about.

When people think we’re all starting to sound alike, that this country is becoming linguistically homogenous, we aren’t.

We still retain these very regional vocabularies and very regional pronunciations.

Yes, and I remember so many people in that group saying, yes, and then I moved across the country, and I used that term just like Chris said.

Yeah, and people looked at you like, yeah, two heads.

Yeah, you just have one of those moments.

Yeah, those two-headed moments.

They always say that.

Zipot, Bilbox moments.

Yeah.

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