RE: "Thank God!"
October 28, 2012 at 12:43 pm
(This post was last modified: October 28, 2012 at 12:45 pm by Cyberman.)
(October 28, 2012 at 12:27 pm)festive1 Wrote: I often exclaim, "Dear god!" Something my oldest has picked up on. My husband thinks this is equivalent to swearing, however, I maintain that it is not. One can't blaspheme an entity that does not exist.
The history of swearing is a fascinating one. Originally, the idea was that of illegally swearing blasphemous oaths. Thus, "bloody" (as in "bloody kids!") derived from the oath "By our Lady", ie JC's mum. There is a whole raft of oaths sworn on various bits of God's body: "God's blood" was a pretty popular one, as was "God's bodkin", rather sweetly referring to God's body and which corrupted to the phrase that seems to define the whole era: "Odd's bodkins". It's only relatively recently that swearing has come to mean bad language, as in naughty words.
(October 28, 2012 at 12:37 pm)DoubtVsFaith Wrote: Indeed words do not have intrinsic meaning, they have to be defined - although, dictionaries often agree a lot and, when in doubt, most people consult a dictionary. There may be no religious intent of such phrases, but because of their typical definitions it's not surprising that they can be misunderstood.
Absolutely, though it must be noted that dictionaries only record usage; they do not in themselves define words.
At the age of five, Skagra decided emphatically that God did not exist. This revelation tends to make most people in the universe who have it react in one of two ways - with relief or with despair. Only Skagra responded to it by thinking, 'Wait a second. That means there's a situation vacant.'
