Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle.
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I think the use of hard expletives is now warranted. This is definitely an “oh, SHIT” moment of history, where the drunken bus driver has just gotten out of his seat in a huff, whilst the bus is careening down the highway…
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I think more than half of the google image search results for “jinkies” were NSFW.
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Yeah, we don’t really have a direct equivalent of “yikes”, at least not that I can think of. North of the border, there are, at least in theory, “Jings!”, “Crivens!”, and “Help ma boab!”, but using them runs the risk of being beaten up by passing Scotsmen for taking the piss.
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you could re-cycle
with the thought of the sales pitch ‘bike-it’ on your yike
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Could go full cockney with the shocked “Cor!”, which I assumed was a workaround of saying the Lord’s name in vain.*
*Whoops, “cor” was listed in the original article.
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And “Zounds!” was a contraction of “God’s wounds!” if I remember my Shakespeare correctly.
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This post courtesy of new BB guest editor, Dennis the Menace
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The real Dennis the Menace, not that anaemic American knock-off.
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But what if you say “yikes” fairly often irl? Do I still have to replace it with “blimey”?
Bollocks I say.
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Heavens to Murgatroyd!
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Uff da.
(9c)
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‘Oh dear, that won’t do at all. Anyone for a cup of tea?’
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My mother, and other southern ladies of a certain age and decorum, would not so much as utter, “I swear!”
Her go-to cry of exasperation or shock was, “I swanny!”
And in cases that required the utmost, “I swanny to my time!”
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An exclamation used by Perry White in Superman. When the Perry White of the 1990’s Lois and Clark used “Great Shades Of Elvis”, I took that one up.
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“And me that has taught you everything you know! Me to go back to Benwick without having seen you prove yourself at all! Why, you have not even used your sword in front of me, not used Joyeux! It is ingratitude, perfidy, treachery! Sorrow to the grave! My faith! By the Blue!”
And the agitated old fellow went off into a long string of Gallic remarks, including the so-called William the Conqueror’s oath of Per Splendorem Dei, and the Pasque Dieu which was the imaginary King Louis the Eleventh’s idea of a joke. Inspired by the royal train of thought he added the exclamations of Rufus, Henry the First, John, and Henry the Third, which were, in that order, By the Holy Face of Lucca, By God’s Death, By God’s Teeth, and By God’s Head. The jerfalcon, seeming to appreciate the display, roused his feathers heartily, like a housemaid shaking a mop out of the window.
– T. H. White, The Once and Future King.
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Lawks-a-mercy!
Or my grandmother’s favourites: “Oh Jesus! (save-my-soul)” or “Oh, Jesus! (who-for-love-of-me-bore-the-cross-to-Calvary)”
Or (in a traffic jam near the end of L. Sprague de Camp’s novel Lest Darkness Fall, set in sixth-century Rome): “Carus-dominus-Iesus-Christus! Maria-mater-Dei! Why can’t you watch where you’re going? Sanctus Petrus Paulusque Ioannesque Lucasque…”
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To this day, I occasionally hear the variation “I swuntaya”, which I have always taken to be a contraction on “I swear unto you …”. I usually hear it from the daughters of southern ladies of a certain age and decorum.
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