Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus Christ on the third day after his crucifixion. Easter was the earliest feast day decreed by the ancient Christian Church, and many consider Easter to be the most important holiday in the Christian calendar.
Flora Hoffman’s letter, below, prompts me to share my thoughts about how we utter Jesus’s name in our culture:
Dear Mr. Lederer: My generation used to say, “Geez Louise!” I decided to see what is said about it on the Net (I just don’t know how else to refer to it except “the wretched thing I know so little about”) regarding its origins.
Heaven knows, I never knew it is thought to be a substitute for Jesus! I attended a Catholic Girls’ (see I know how to use that apostrophe after Girls) High School, class of 1951, and if the nuns heard us say, “Geez” as a substitute for “Jesus,” we would never have graduated from that high school. – Flora Hoffman
English speakers apparently take deeply to heart the biblical commandment not to take the Lord’s name in vain and Christ’s injunction to eschew all swearing, either by heaven or by earth.
We live in a culture in which calling out the name of Jesus Christ in church is a sign of moral rectitude. But, once outside, we have to find ways of not quite saying that name. Most prominent among those taboo euphemisms, as they are called, are gee, geez and gee whiz (“Je-sus”). Add to that list gee whillikers, geez Louise, jesum crow, Christmas, holy cow, holy crow, holy Christmas, cripes, criminey, crikey, by Jingo, by Jiminy, Jiminy Cricket, Jiminy Christmas, Judas Priest and even jeepers creepers.
Have you ever noticed how many different ways we have come up with to avoid saying God and damnation?: gosh, golly, goodness gracious, good grief, good gravy, by gar, by golly, by gum, dad gum, doggone, gol dang, gol darn, dear me ( an approximation of the Italian Dio mio, “my God”), jumpin’ Jehoshaphat (“jumping Jehovah”), begorrah( Irish for “by God”), great Scott, gosh all fishhooks (“ God almighty”), by gorey, by Godfrey and W. C. Fields’ Godfrey Daniels.
Older and more elegant stratagems for skirting the name of the Almighty include egad (“ye gods”), odds bodkins (a shortening of “God’s body”), gadzooks (“God’s hooks,” the nails of the cross), drat (“God rot”), ‘sblood (“God’s blood”) and zounds (“God’s wounds”).
Who needs to shout, “hell!” when Sam Hill (euphemism for “damn hell”) is available to help us cuss (“curse”) in a socially acceptable manner? Sam Hill was not a particular person, but “Sam Hill” expressions, such as what the Sam Hill! and mad as Sam Hill , grewupin the American West in the 1830s. Sam Hill was a trusty friend of frontiersmen, especially when they needed to cleanup their language in the presence of womenfolk. One can count among additional surrogates for hell the words heck, hey, Halifax, Hoboken and Jesse (“if you don’t watch out, you’re going to catch Jesse”).
Recent developments on the political scene have raised questions about proper pronunciation. After the death of first lady Nancy Reagan, many remembered her deep devotion to her husband, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. It turns out that almost nobody correctly sounds the name of that affliction.
The Alz part of the word is the stumbling block, and it’s not rightly pronounced Awlz , rhyming with halls, or Alz , rhyming with pals. No, the weight of lexical authority favors Ahlts-hy- murz . Note the t. The disease is named after German physician Alois Alzheimer, and in German, many a z is pronounced tz , as in Mozart.
The recent flap over the question of whether Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump repudiated the endorsement of David Duke and the Ku Klux Klan spawned a spate of pronouncements pronounced Klu Klux Klan. But the Klan is clueless, so avoid sneaking an l into the first word.
Barack Obama and most reporters have described the president’s visit to Cuba as “a historic occasion.” That’s better than “an historic occasion.” The rule is that a precedes consonant sounds and an precedes vowel sounds — a, e, i, o and u . When the h is silent, as in honor and hour, use an . When the h is pronounced, as in hamburger and (ahem!) historic, use a .