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A minced oath is an expression based on a profanity which has been altered to reduce or remove the disagreeable or objectionable characteristics of the original expression; for example, "gosh" used instead of "God", "darn" instead of "damn" and "heck" instead of "hell". The profanities upon which minced oaths are based are usually religious in nature. The use of minced oaths originally began in the United Kingdom sometime before the Victorian Age, as part of the cultural impact of Puritanism after the Protestant Reformation. For a list of minced oaths, see List of minced oaths. Some minced oaths became well-known as a result of use in theatre, where there were sometimes strict taboos on the use of certain religious phrases; many survive to this day in literary contexts (such as the Shakespearean "'swounds" or "zounds"). The censorship caused people to develop a wide variety of minced oaths to avoid swearing on holy names. They were used for swearing and other types of interjections. With time they came to have a mildly comic effect. Sometimes the comedy was intentional, such as when U.S. comedian W. C. Fields would bypass Hollywood restrictions by exclaiming "Godfrey Daniel!" as a substitute for "God damn it!" Some minced oaths are a handy escape route to avoid finishing a profanity one has inadvertently begun. For example, one might begin to say "shit," decide against it, and conceal the error by completing the word as "." Likewise, the word "fudge" may be used instead of the word "." Although minced oaths are not as strong or offensive as the words from which they are derived, some such as "" are often avoided in polite speech. Minced oaths tend to take on a humourously quaint tone as time goes by. As the more direct forms become more accepted in common parlance, the munged versions lose their purpose, signifying an old-fashioned innocence on the part of the speaker. Some such euphemisms have taken on a meaning of their own. "", for example, has been jocularly presented as the place where the souls of deceased people who were somewhat sinful - but not bad enough to warrant the eternal torment of Hell - are punished. One example of this concept in popular literature is in the comic strip Dilbert, in which a character named Phil, The Prince of Insufficient Light (a milder styling than "Prince of Darkness") is the spoon-wielding (rather than fork-wielding) ruler of Heck, and appears periodically to inflict mild punishments (""ings) upon characters for their moderate transgressions.
Fictional minced oaths Writers have occasionally invented their own alternatives for today's swear words. In science fiction, this illustrates the evolution of language over time, and also allows the characters to naturally avoid using television-censored words. In reaction to a Supreme Court ruling on the use of obscenity, Robert Anton Wilson substituted obscene words in the book Schrödinger's Cat III with the names of Supreme Court justices from the 1970s. Fictional minced oaths have also been used in film for comedic effect. In the film Johnny Dangerously, the fictional Italian gangster Roman Maroni frequently speaks strings of invented minced oaths, such as "You lousy corksuckers" and "You farging iceholes." See also | ||||||||
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