A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo term to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics. Some examples include "gosh" for God, "darn" for damn, and "heck" for Hell.
Many languages have such expressions. In the English language, nearly all profanities have minced variants.
Read more about Minced Oath: Formation, History, Acceptability, Literature and Censorship, Examples
Famous quotes containing the word oath:
“Here I swear, and as I break my oath may ... eternity blast me, here I swear that never will I forgive Christianity! It is the only point on which I allow myself to encourage revenge.... Oh, how I wish I were the Antichrist, that it were mine to crush the Demon; to hurl him to his native Hell never to rise again—I expect to gratify some of this insatiable feeling in Poetry.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)