Suffering succotash

Question

According to this website:

In the mid-1800s, during the Victorian era, there was a rejection of all profanity and so the common people developed a wide variety of malapropisms to avoid swearing on Holy names. Soon, one could hear Cripes and Crikey replace “Christ” and Dangnabit replace “G*d damn it” and Cheese ‘n’ Rice replace “Jesus Christ.” The phrase Suffering Succotash replaced “Suffering Savior.”

Today the latter phrase is known only as an expression of annoyance and surprise by animated cartoon characters such as Sylvester the Cat and Daffy Duck. Was the expression still in vogue when the Looney Tunes cartoons were made, or did the cartoons resurrect an expression that had already lapsed from the American lexicon?

Answer 1

I don't see any evidence that it was ever a common expression before the cartoon.

Minced oaths generally date back much further than the 1800s. Socrates and Aristophanes give us examples in ancient Greek, and several slurrings of oaths exist in English from the early modern period on.

They exist today too in people saying "gosh" and so on, along with a variation for lavatorial and sexual expletives (sugar for shit, fricken for fucking and so on). They tend to be often localised in form, with for example jaysus for Jesus only appearing in and around Dublin, Ireland (a pronunciation that would once have been used only in some Dublin accents being adapted by other Dubliners exclusively for non-religious senses) and various expressions coming in and out of favour as with local slang expressions one finds varying greatly around the world.

Because of the great variety in real use, and the added requirement for such uses in some media (where the writer is not allowed to have Sylvester the Cat say "God-damn that fucking mouse!"), and the fact that most writers are writers and writers like playing with words, minced oaths have a greater variety in fiction than in real life (though life often imitates art in this regard). Holy Inventive Phrasing, Batman!

As such, "suffering succotash" was likely used precisely because it wasn't very likely to be heard as an actual minced oath and that, combined with the chiming of /sʌ/ in both words, and so is humorous. Indeed, in this case it would not so much be a matter of the cat's swearing being replaced by a minced oath as with the naff of "Porridge" and the smeg of "Red Dwarf" (where we could expect expletives to be a larger part of the characters' vocabulary if allowed) but rather he uses funny minced oaths purely because they are funny.

Answer 2

Usage - "The Dick Van Dyke Show" - Season 3 Episode 21: "The Pen is Mightier Than the Mouth" (19 February, 1964) The character Buddy Sorrell (Buddy Sorrell) verbally reacted to Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) announcing he was going to fire Sally Rogers (Rose Marie) by exclaiming, "suc-co-tash!"

Answer 3

When you think about it, Suffering is a star of on going pain, and Succotash is a an American dish. America is, as everyone knows a very religious place and there have been many other ongoing debates as to whether this 'catchphrase' was ever real. There was a rejection of Profanity in the mid 1800's, Victorian Age, so the common people developed a wide variety of malapropisms to avoid swearing on Holy names. They were used for swearing and other types of interjections. With time they came to have a mildly comedic effect. People are not so concerned about blasphemy, nowadays. We have worse problems.

Crikey = 'Christ' Cripes = 'Christ' Jeez = 'Jesus' Dangnabit = 'Damnation" by gum = "by g-d" by gosh =" by g-d" by golly = "by the name of g-d" jumping jehosaphat suffering succotash = 'Suffering Saviour' Proof of this came down to many, not many, but some recollected diary entries from young children of this time. Many people claim that their grandparents had told stories about such prevailer things and used the phrase 'Suffering succotash'. You may be sitting in your chai in bliss with a grin on your face thinking, this persons an idiot, people could have easily just said that even if it didn't happen. Well, if you dig a little deeper you find that currently 25% and up of the world still has no interest access. That's right an entire quarter has no access to internet and in many cases those which do don't have many people who can afford it anyway. And the funny things is that many people that remember these stories come from these countries meaning the chances of them knowing what the looney tunes are is rather small.

So to some this up in simple terms, for all those people out there that fell asleep halfway, Yes, 'Suffering Succotash' is a real thing that was used by many people throughout the mid 1800's and I absolutly LOVE the phrase.