Re: Phrase meaning

Posted by Lewis on March 01, 2004

In Reply to: Phrase meaning posted by Mike Blue on March 01, 2004

: My late mother, born in 1909 and from North Carolina used a phrase of disgust...."for garden seed!". Such an example would be "For garden seed, you should be more patient". Can anyone tell me where this phrase comes from?

this is just another euphemism, "for God's sake!"
anything that sounds vaguely similar can be substituted for the profanity - 'for garden seed' may not be the closest, but it is near enough to do the job.

there are lots of (particularly religious) oaths which have become sanitised over the years - "Zounds!" is for 'by God's wounds' "Gor blimey!" or "Blimey!" is 'may God blind me'. 'fer crissake' is on the way from "For Christ's sake" but 'Kinell!' is still seen as just a shortened form of the original oath.

it takes time for the original meaning to be lost.