Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/11/27
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 08:48 AM 11/27/2000 -0500, Simon Stevens wrote: >My understanding is that bloody is a corruption of "by our lady" - i.e. >refering to the Virgin Mary. The derivation, and connotation (which has >largely been lost anyway) are therefore completely different. > >This is a mythical back-formation. All lexicographers seem united in >simply saying that the derivation is from, well, "bloody" - just the use of >an unseemly concept as a mild expletive. Marc You may very well be right, which is why I expressed a fair amount of doubt in what I wrote. The bottom line is that as you rightly say, it's a mild expletive, unlike some others which we could probably live without on the LUG. Simon Stevens, who in his infantry days may possibly have muttered an expletive or two.