Gosh, bugger...

Doon   Monday, March 01, 2004, 00:34 GMT
I heard a lot of 'gosh' and some 'bugger' in New York University I was visiting last month. I thought the words were kind of exclusively British.
Is this the university campus feature?
mjd   Monday, March 01, 2004, 08:34 GMT
"Gosh" certainly isn't exclusively British...you'll hear it as a euphemism for "God" (ex. "oh gosh) among some people.
Simon   Monday, March 01, 2004, 09:18 GMT
Saying God casually is a Christian sin, so in the days when people were more serious about this kind of thing, they came up with nonsense curse words to replace the actual word God (gosh, golly etc.). The so-called Cockney classic "cor blimey" is just such a euphemism and comes from "God, blind me" (also appears as gor blimey). As these are mostly from many hundred years ago, it is not suprising that they exist in America too.
Alice   Monday, March 01, 2004, 19:02 GMT
My Grandmother says "gosh" all the time, as do a lot of older people, but I don't think it's terribly common with the younger set, (at least not ones I know). I use "bugger" quite a bit, but it bothers my mother.
Paul   Tuesday, March 02, 2004, 16:18 GMT
to say Bugger as an interjection, when you are frustrated or something goes badly wrong, is British usage. Similarly "all buggered up".
American still use bugger for its original sexual meaning, and would say,
"fucked up" to indicate something is screwed up or messed up.
Sex is blamed for a lot of Chaos and Trouble in the Anglo-saxon world, eh?
Simon   Tuesday, March 02, 2004, 17:06 GMT
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A satirical look at clumsy white attempts at integration.