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Now that swearing like a pirate has jumped the shark, isn’t it time we exhumed another subgenre of anachronistic curse words? To save us all from another “scurvy dogs” joke — one more and I will walk the bloody plank — I humbly propose replacing all naughty pirate jargon with crusty old-prospector talk, which is just as colorful, if not more expletive-laced. But this time, let’s be smart about it — nerdy, even — and figure out from whence they came before we start throwing them around willy-nilly. To that end, here are my top five old prospector curses, and their respective, only slightly questionable, etymologies:
1. To dadburn
Function: verb
Definition: to curse
Etymology: “Dad” is a substitute for “God” in turn-of-the-century Southern U.S. vernacular. “Godburn” certainly sounds like Old-Testament-style divine retribution; ie, to curse.
Use it in a sentence: “Dadburned boll weevil done ‘et my crop!”
2. To hornswoggle
Function: verb
Definition: To embarrass, disconcert or confuse.
Etymology: Belongs to a group of “fancified” words popular in the 19th century American West, invented to ridicule sophisticates back east. (Funny, it didn’t quite work out that way.)
Use it in a sentence: “I’ll be hornswoggled!”
3. Sockdolager
Function: noun
Definition: A big finish.
Etymology: A mis-heard, semi-spoonerism of the word “doxologer,” a colloquial New England rendering of “doxology,” which was a Puritan term for the collective raising of voices in song at the end of a worship service. Thus, a “sockdolager” is something truly exceptional — the end-all-be-all.
Use it in a sentence: “Well, I guess I know enough to turn you inside out, you sockdologisin’ old man-trap!”
Fun fact: The above line appears in Tom Taylor’s play Our American Cousin, which was performed on the evening of April 14th, 1865 at Ford’s Theater. It got a big laugh from the crowd, which John Wilkes Booth used to muffle the sound of the gunshot that assassinated President Lincoln.
4. Consarn
Function: noun
Definition: The whole of something, though often misused as “damn.”
Etymology: Unknown, though it pops up in British literature as early as the eighteenth century. An educated guess: it’s related to concern, a business establishment or enterprise.
Use it in a quip by 19th century American humorist Henry Wheeler Shaw: “Put an Englishman into the Garden of Eden, and he would find fault with the whole blarsted consarn!”
5. Dumfungled
Function: adjective
Definition: Used up
Etymology: Also unknown, though it was coined during the Great Neologism Craze of the 1830s, and its common usage didn’t survive the turn of the century.
Use it in a sentence: “Ye’d best put that dumfungled hoss out to pasture!”
Got some anachronistic filth of your own? Let us know!
Comments (18)
Comment
great post!
posted by Mangesh on 9-19-2006 at 4:01 pm
How about - “Well, I’ll swan!” (def. - I’m amazed or I’ll swear)
posted by Larriann on 9-19-2006 at 4:48 pm
Avast! What be with all this here “cowboy speech”? Know ye not that today be “Talk Like A Pirate Day”?
posted by Dave on 9-19-2006 at 5:01 pm
Not to be picky, OK, I’ll be picky. “Dadburn”, as you have described it, would be an adjective. In the sentence you supplied, “dadburn” describes the type of boll weevil, a cursed one.
posted by KJ on 9-20-2006 at 9:03 am
KJ - right you are! Dadburn it!
posted by Ransom on 9-20-2006 at 11:18 am
Sockdolager is a new one on me, but I hear the other terms every day. However, consarn is used nowadays as an adjective, as “consarned”.
posted by Miss Cellania on 9-20-2006 at 12:12 pm
Mighten.
mighten I try my hand at this?
posted by john weeks on 9-20-2006 at 12:58 pm
“DAGNABIT!!!,I’VE HAD IT WRONG ALL THESE
YEARS..”
posted by SISSY on 9-27-2006 at 11:09 am
Sockdolager is the name of a Colorado River rapid in Grand Canyon…Cheers, -MisAdventure
posted by MisAdventure on 9-27-2006 at 11:43 am
I’m really fond of ‘absquatulate’.
If you absquatulate you either:
a) leave in an all-fired hurry, usually absconding.
b) die
or
c) argue.
So, to absquatulate carries more of an air of skeedaddling to avoid dire consequences than just vamoosing because you’re hankerin’ for another cup of Cookie’s campfire coffee.
posted by Sylvia on 9-27-2006 at 7:57 pm
If you’d like to hear me use “absquatulate” in a sentence — a pop song, even — check this out:
http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/1909
posted by Ransom on 9-27-2006 at 8:52 pm
“Whence” means “from where” so “from whence” is redundant.
“Willy-nilly” began as “Will he, nil he” which means “whether he wants to or not” see the rubaiyat: “like water willy-nilly flowing”
posted by kate oconnor on 9-28-2006 at 1:48 pm
I’ve always been partial to the expression my ole grampaw from Arkinsaw used:
“DAD-GUM IT!”
posted by sparky on 9-28-2006 at 6:23 pm
When i lived in the South i learned to say “shoot far” which is shortened from “Sh*t fire and save your matches” Makes no sense, but i still love it.
posted by Melodie on 9-29-2006 at 12:37 am
So this is an unofficial pronouncement. January 19, 2007 will mark the first “International Talk Like a Prospector Day”
Stay tuned for more information.
posted by Tucker Steele on 12-15-2006 at 11:50 am
This all sounds like a’bunch a’codswallop to me.
posted by Steve Rolo on 12-16-2006 at 3:46 pm
Writers who still say “jumped the shark” have jumped their own shark. That phrase is totally lame and overused at this point.
posted by Jack Burden on 9-27-2007 at 2:15 am
Commenters who say that writers who say “jumped the shark” have jumped the shark, have jumped the shark.
That lame and overused attitude of petty ennui is a hollow and derivative reminiscence of the great “I’m bored with this” posts of the past.
posted by John Young on 3-28-2008 at 3:48 pm