Fun fact: An archaic word for these is “ejaculations”. Now, imagine 12 year old me, having read old British fiction from like 1700s-1800s and picking up on archaic words like that and using them in front of my peers.
I didn’t have a pleasant childhood. heh.
Also, “golly” was mentioned as a non-religious one, but “golly” ultimately comes from “God”, so… alas, it doesn’t qualify.
A lot of them are bowdlerizations or minced oaths of religious ones, or at least memetic drift streamlining them. Zounds, struth, darn, gosh, jeeze… tarnation.
Fun fact: An archaic word for these is “ejaculations”. Now, imagine 12 year old me, having read old British fiction from like 1700s-1800s and picking up on archaic words like that and using them in front of my peers.
I didn’t have a pleasant childhood. heh.
Also, “golly” was mentioned as a non-religious one, but “golly” ultimately comes from “God”, so… alas, it doesn’t qualify.
A lot of them are bowdlerizations or minced oaths of religious ones, or at least memetic drift streamlining them. Zounds, struth, darn, gosh, jeeze… tarnation.