God Idioms

Several words have become part of the language in being used in phrases. Last time we looked at ‘god’ and now look at ‘day’.

God bless you, said when someone has sneezed, has often been attributed to St Gregory the Great who lived in the 7th century, but it is recorded the Romans and earlier still the Ancient Greeks had similar customs and thus the expression has been in use for more than 2,500 years.

Gods gift to (whatever) first appears in 1931.

God squad, a reference to a religious group, first appears in 1969.

God’s acre, a reference to a burial ground, appears in the 1610s. It’s a poor transaltion from the German Gottesacker, which simply meant ‘field’.

God-daughters appeared in the middle of the 13th century.

Nobody was God-fearing until 1759, which tends to wreck many a Hollywood version of the Pilgrim Fathers aboard the Mayflower, prior to that the term was God-fright.

God-awful does not appear in a dictionary until 1924, but the OED states the term had been used in the sense ‘impressively terrible’ since 1897, and prior to that as meaning ‘impressive’ since 1878.

God-speed has been seen since the late 14th century.

Goddamn is seen as early as the 14th century, it is believed this came from the French godon, a term used by the French to describe the English.

Godsend, as in sudden good fortune, is seen from 1812 – prior to that it simply meant ‘shipwreck’.

Godless was first seen in 1520, and became the name of the organization who suppressed religion in the former Soviet Union.

Godfathers have been known since the early 12th century, but used in a more general sense since the release of the film of the same name in 1972.

Nothing was godforsaken until 1816.

Godparent is a term unrecorded before 1865.

Godism is first seen in 1861 as a contemptuous term for another’s faith.

The term demigod is not seen before the 1520s.

Nothing was said to be Godlike until 1510.

Godson is first recorded around 1200.

Godmother is seen from the late 13th century.

Godchild is also seen from the early 13th century.

My research unveiled this: “I want my lawyer, my colleagues, my friends, my family, and even my wife to believe in God. It will mean I will be cheated, robbed, lied about, and cuckolded less often."