I admit that I have what you might call a short fuse and when that powder keg blows, I can let loose with some pretty colorful language. This is certainly not a good example for my family, so I need to do everything I can to change this behavior.
One way I’ve attempted to moderate my vocabulary is to replace some of the more modern expressions of profanity I’m tempted to use with old fashioned phrases–those likely to be more accepted in polite society. So, the next time you might be tempted to shout out something indecent, try using one of these phrases instead:
- Ain’t that the berries (a phrase my dad still uses)
- By all the saints
- Cheese and crackers
- Crimeny / Crime-a-nitly
- Cripes
- Dangnabit / dad-gummit
- Dash it all / blast it all
- Drats
- Fiddlesticks
- For all that’s holy
- For crying out loud
- For Pete’s sake
- Fudgesicle
- Gee whillikers
- Geez / Geez-peez-o / Geez-o-Pete
- Good golly / good gracious / good grief (commonly used by Charlie Brown) / good heavens / good lord
- Great day in the mornin’
- Heaven’s to Betsy / heavens to Murgatroyd (popularized by Snagglepuss)
- Hogwallered
- Holy moley / holy cow / holy smoke(s)
- It went all to whaley
- I’ll bread and butter you to pickles
- Jeepers (favorite of the Scooby Doo gang) [Jinkies also works]
- Jimminy Christmas
- Jumpin’ Jehoshaphat
- Kiss my grits (one of Flo’s go-tos)
- Lord have mercy / mercy sakes / mercy
- Not on your old lady’s tintype
- Pickle! (an expression I stole from my uncle)
- Shazbots (made famous by Mork from Ork)
- Suffering succotash (thanks, Sylvester!)
- That burns my pancakes
- That frosts my cake / That really takes the cake
- Well don’t that beat all?
- What in the world? / What in (the) Sam Hill?
- What the fork (Ok…a more recent phrase from The Good Place)
- Why the face? (Ok, ok…another modern phrase compliments of Phil Dunphy)
- You burned the beans
- You can’t hornswoggle me
- You’re as batty as bananas
- You’ve got splinters in the windmill of your mind
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