We were vacationing with our family. I accidentally snapped a DVD in half that belonged to my greatgrandson. He and I went to a nearby store and I bought him a replacement. When we came home, I told his mother I had found a replacement and given it to her son. She immediately said,"Son of a……….biscuit!" She had plans to do that herself.
I often wondered whether her use of the name of something to eat instead of the more usual term was original with her. I called her the other day to ask. She said that she and her husband watch the tv program "The GoodPlace", about a heavenly place where you simply cannot swear. People there cannot physically manage to utter "bad" words. She and my grandson-in-law have some laughs from the program and have practiced alternative utterances used in the program.
I guess the famous F word is still one of the most forbidden words among Americans. John McWhorten and others have made it clear that language is always changing. When I was 10 years old, I was threatened with having my mouth washed out with soap if I said bad words, which I rarely did. Decades later, I saw a video of a standup comedian who used the F word quite often and each use drew waves of laughter. I didn't think it was all that funny.
About ten years ago, I told my daughter something surprising and she said, "Oh, my goodness". I just looked up "expletives" and one result explicitly mentioned "oh, my goodness" and "oh, my gracious". Spitting out strong words can relieve tension but can be off-putting to some hearers. I applaud my granddaughter's use of What the Fork! instead of the more usual phrase, the same one overused by gangsters in this except from a Donald Westlake novel.
https://sites.google.com/view/kirbyvariety1/overuse-of-illogical-expletive
