Words in Time and Place by Crystal David

Author:Crystal, David
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780199680474
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2014-07-11T16:00:00+00:00

Timeline

lo †

OE

Lo is attested in Old English, but this was hardly an oath – more like a modern oh! It has long lost its exclamatory function, being used today as an attention-directing particle chiefly in historical and biblical narratives. Outside these contexts, it’s sometimes heard in breezy, jocular story-telling: lo and behold …

spi †

c.1225

This too is hardly oath-like – more an exclamation of disgust, used in the same way as later fie!

how

mischance †

c.1330

Mischance is ‘bad luck, ill fortune’. Chaucer uses it both as a single word and in construction with how and with. It must have been a fairly genteel oath, as Criseyde uses it when thinking of her future in the Greek camp: ‘Or how, meschaunce, sholde I dwelle there’ (Troilus and Criseyde, c.1385, Book 4.1362). On the other hand, the Host – never one to avoid a meaty oath – uses it in the prologue to The Manciple’s Tale (c.1390, line 11): ‘Is that a cook of Londoun, with meschaunce?’ where he means ‘ill luck to him!’ (because the cook had fallen asleep). How meschaunce would probably equate today with ‘how the devil …  ’

by my hood †

c.1374

Hoods were worn by monks as a sign of their calling, so using a hood as an oath would originally have meant more than referring just to a piece of clothing – more like ‘by my faith’. But as time went by, and men and women started to wear different styles of hood, the oath lost a lot of its force. It is almost jocular when Gratiano, amazed at Jessica’s actions, comments: ‘Now by my hood, a gentile and no Jew!’ (Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, c.1597, 2.6.51).

by my sheath †

1532

A sheath was the covering into which a blade was placed when not in use. The associations with weapons and manhood gave it some force. There are no OED citations after the sixteenth century.

by the

mouse-foot †

1550

The expression contrasts with the various religious oaths of the time, where by God’s foot was one of many that used parts of Christ’s body as a serious oath. A mouse’s foot goes to the opposite extreme, and suggests an oath that doesn’t mean very much. ‘I’ll come and visit you, by the mouse-foot I will,’ says the parasite Weathercock to Sir Lancelot (in The London Prodigall, author unknown, 1605, 2.2).

what a/the goodyear †

c.1555

In Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing (c.1599, 1.3.1), Conrade addresses Don John: ‘What the goodyear, my lord, why are you thus out of measure sad?’ The origins of the expression are obscure. There is a parallel in Dutch, where the source seems to lie in the optimistic exclamation ‘as I hope for a good year’. But any literal meaning had gone by Shakespeare’s time, so that a modern equivalent is more like ‘what on earth’ or ‘what the dickens’.

bread and salt †

1575

Two of the necessaries of life, so a fairly weighty oath for anyone in a domestic setting. Dame Chat and Gammer Gurton both use it, in Gammer Gurton’s Needle (1575, unknown author, 2.2, 5.

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