Question about cursing / Oliver

Daniel van Eijmeren dve at kabelfoon.nl
Thu Feb 15 22:54:51 CET 2001


FRANK STAJANO to FRANCOIS WILLOT, 16 FEBRUARY 2001:

> ["Nom de dieu" = "for God's sake" !] Note that, as far as I am personally
> concerned,  I am not in the least upset by this, being an atheist. But,
> to those who follow a religion that orders them not to pronounce the
> name of their God in vain, it might be shocking to discover that they
> just voiced a euphemistically disguised placeholder for "name of God".

In The Netherlands, "Nom de dieu" is also being used (untranslated). 
I didn't know it's a French curse. I wonder how many other Dutch people do,
because (as far as know) it is used as an innocent replacement for a curse.

The Dutch equivalent for "For God's Sake" is "godverdomme", which literally
means "God, doom me". I hate using curses myself. (Even mentioning and
translating this curse makes me shiver.) 

What is the literal meaning of "For ... Sake"? Is it nescessarily connected
to a curse when it doesn't mention God in it? I mean, could "For Pete's
Sake" also be offending to religious people?

The reason why I'm asking this is that I wonder if religious people could
have been offended by the title of Barks' story "For Old Dime's Sake" (US
43).
At least in The Netherlands, there are religious people who also strongly
object to censored/mild variations of a curse.

Daan Jippes mentions "pot-vol-peremoes" in his 1977 Duckburg Festival
ten-pager, which is a rather mild phonetical (and comical) variation of
the Dutch curse. About this story I've also wondered if it has resulted
in complaints from readers.


OLIVIER, 15 FEBRUARY 2001:

Thanks for your information on Barks' poem.

> PS:    I hope I fixed the MIME setting so the message won't be crammed
> with lines of  code. All my apologies for the inconvenience.

Your email is still accompanied by HTML-codes. I don't know which email
software you use, but there must be an option somewhere which can turn
off the use of HTML in emails.


Best wishes,

--- Daniel



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