English usage and grammar

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A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.

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Online resources:

Cambridge English Dictionary
Merriam-Webster Dictionary and Thesaurus
Gilman's Webster's Dictionary of English Usage. This is a great and witty reference about usage, its history, and its controveries

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(Icon: entry "English" in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933. Banner: page from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".)

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When is "Jesus wept" used? (lemmy.world)

submitted 8 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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The first time I came across the usage of this phrase was in the movie Hellraiser, and I had no idea this was a common saying. Clearly though, there must be a double meaning there in the movie that I couldn't fully grasp without knowing the more colloquial meaning.

The description on Wikipedia is unfortunately not enough for me, I would like to see examples. And it's very hard to find those because Google gives me mostly links to religious websites.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 8 months ago

No, oath is just a tad archaic, but it's a standard usage, not slang or dialect.

Iirc, that usage stems from the same as "swear" does, where the use of a "curse" word is an expression of emphasis or conviction, like saying "I swear to god, I'm going to kick this chicken into orbit if it pecks my foot again."

Mind you, I haven't gone looking for any rigorous history of that because it's bloody difficult to search for on the internet. I'm basing that off of decades old time in a college with instructors willing to chat about their subject matter casually. It could have been the pet theory of the professor in question rather than an established fact.