This entry submitted to Wordsmith.org’s pangram contest was timely, but didn’t win: Ariana Grande visited a bakery, licked a doughnut, and made an unpatriotic, jejune exclamation; she was required to apologize thereafter. This is part of...
In her 1958 memoir Beloved Infidel, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s lover Sheilah Graham recalls the famous author’s distaste for exclamation points, the use of which he compared to “laughing at your own joke.” Some have proposed that...
Good googly moogly—or great googly moogly—is a jubilant exclamation for surprise, delight, or emphasis, something Lisa from Chesapeake, Virginia, remembers her father saying over a big fish at Hatteras Harbor Marina. The form was established in...
When Matt was growing up in western North Carolina, he heard the word gaum, also spelled gom, meaning a mess. Someone misbehaving might be described as gauming around, or something was gaumed up, meaning messed up, or a person was dismissed as...
Ellen in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, wonders about the origin of the exclamation jeezum pete! It’s a minced oath — that is, a way of avoiding saying “Jesus Christ!” most likely derived by combining it with St. Pete. There are dozens...
The term bobbery means a noisy disturbance or hubub. The word’s origin is disputed, although one explanation is that it comes from the Hindi exclamation “Bap re!” or literally, “Oh father!” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...