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In a children's story I was reading the other day, one of the characters said

"Land Sakes"

...from the context of the story, it must be to indicate they are surprised?

It was completely foreign to me and I just generally wanted to know more about it

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1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

It's a euphemism for "Lord Sakes", which is itself a non-grammatical corruption of "for the Lord's sake!"

It can be pretty amusing to observe the lengths to which people will go to avoid blasphemy, while still expressing their strong feelings on a subject...

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Similarly 'lawks' - both are a bit dated but a staple of 19C fiction. – mgb May 25 '11 at 4:23
I've never quite understood why expressing the same feeling, but using different sounds was avoiding blasphemy. Is it really the noises we make that make the difference, and motives are immaterial? – thursdaysgeek May 25 '11 at 21:49
@thursdaygeek - The motives of believers are a deep, dark mystery to me - Pascal's Wager being the classic example. If the deity you believe in (or decide to pretend to believe in) is actually omnipotent, can't S/He see your motives? And if not... then what's the point? – MT_Head May 25 '11 at 23:53
@MT_head - probably to avoid upsetting other people especially, in times pasts, more religous ones. Same reason you say oh-flip instead oh-fuck in front of other people's children – mgb May 26 '11 at 3:54
@Martin - I understand the motive for euphemism in people who habitually use stronger language - I also censor myself (usually successfully!) around kids and polite company. But "land sakes!" and "lawks!" are/were typically used by people who never said anything stronger... so again, the psychology befuddles me. If you believe that blasphemy is wrong and God will punish you for it, what's the motivation for skirting blasphemy as closely as possible? To me, it's a slightly different case than "oh flip"; I suspect that you personally don't believe you'd go to Hell for saying "oh fuck?" – MT_Head May 26 '11 at 5:36
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