Tragic loss

My understanding was that is stemmed from "God's blood", which is similar to your understanding. A lot of the archaic swear words have interesting origins, and they don't seem so shocking in the less religious world of today.

"Zounds" for example, was a sanctified version of "God's Wounds". In the early twentieth century lots of frowned-on words were replaced with similar sounding harmless words, like "Golly" and "Gosh" instead of "God". Many of us have hit our finger with the hammer and started to say "sh*t", then noticed that Granny was in the area and finished up saying "sugar"

The classic Irish one is "Fe*k", which nice polite old ladies and priests can say without any reproach, but the real F word is considered beyond the pale.

Anyway , I don't know what started me on that OT ramble. I'd best shut up before George sends the boys with the baseball bats 'round.

Regards, Arthur G

My understanding is that the word "bloody" is a corruption of "By our Lady", which is /was originally a mild Christian profanity, similar to the still commonly used as "By Christ!"

"Bloody" is pretty mild, in my book, although I don't use it in family/polite company situations.

There was a Great War "trench" poem attributed to an exasperated digger (soldier) which used the word several times in each line, must look it up.

P.S. I visited the Solihul bike museum in 1984, Halls 1 - 4 chock-a-block. Hall 5 was still in the planning stage, but I've never forgotten the magnificent display of bikes. My special interest was the Clyno - wonder if it survived? I still have the beautiful catalogues.

JW² Norton AntiVirus 2003 installed

'Bloody Orkney' is a good illustration...