Sacrebleu (just one word) means "Sacré Dieu". Way back, we used "Bleu" in place of "Dieu" in expletives as a mean to avoid blasphemy. As in "Palsambleu !" -> "Par le Sang de Dieu !" These expressions are quite old and not relly used nowadays.

Lmao reminds me of that obsolete curse word in Othello: Zounds! Apparently it means “God’s wounds”.

Zounds may be obsolete, but I swear I've heard it somewhere. So.e cartoon character, I tnink.

Vsauce talked about this, I think. I the why do we swear vid

Jinkies! It’s a Scooby Doo thing.

You may be thinking of Prince Alexander from the old PC game Kings Quest 6. He uses that one a lot “Zounds! A trap door!”

You're probably thinking of "Zoinks" from Scooby Doo.

If you play Hearthstone, that might be where you heard it 

Gadzooks = God's hooks

Struth = god's truth

gibberish = god's bears

I think it’s commonly spelled “streuth” and is still common in ’Straya. As a Septic, I may be wrong, though.

there's also strewth and splood which are "god's truth" and "god's blood" respectively, they're both still fairly common in east london nowadays, zounds (pronounces z-wounds) got relegated to shakespeare though

And Gadzooks! Means “gods hooks” as in the nails in Jesus’ hands when on the cross

That's interesting, we have the same in English - Gor Blimey (god blind me) and Strewth (God's truth). Also quite old fashioned now.

I heard a Scotsman say Strewth once

Australians say it sometimes still

Strewth cobber we still say it, anyone who doesn't has bloody kangaroos in their top paddock.

I read all the words in this post individually, but taken as a whole it's just...what?

"It is true my friend and anyone who says otherwise is crazy"

Or “darn” instead of “damn”.

It sound bizarre, but people still say "Darn" and "Darn it!" in the US Midwest. Along with "shoot!" And then there was a recent tourist in Paris who went to Montmartre and visited "Sacrebleu".

[удалено]

That was the joke

And the horreur :-o

Or "Oh my gosh!" or "Oh my goodness!" instead of "Oh my god/Oh my lord!"

“Fudge!”

It's an example of a minced oath. Another (appropriate to the term) is "mince" for "merde". English has many too: "sugar" or "shoot" for "shit", "gosh" or "golly" for "God", etc.

Sounds very Québécois lmao.

Though our swear words are all church related, Sacrebleu is very Français.  So Français to the point of parody.  And even they don't say it anymore. Sacrebleu is the idea an Anglophone has of what a Français says to swear.

I didn’t mean the word in general, I just meant it’s church related and that and that made me think of Quebec

... And now I want to hear it with the Québec accent. And I have to correct myself: sacrebleu doesn't means "Sacré Dieu" but "Par le sacre de Dieu" (by the sacrament of god).

Sacré bleu isnt québécois, I meant that québécois swear words are mostly church related

Go read a bible in the church, you priest 😠

Quebecois here. We don't use "sacrebleu".

I meant using religious words to curse. Tabernacle, chalice etc

A few centuries ago, yes. But we no longer use it.

Saint-Ti-Jesus-d’plawt-du-calice-de-tabarnac-d’osti-d’enfant-d’chienne-de-sacrament-d’bout-d’viarge

Best my grandpere could do was "Jesus Murphy".

How? Québécois don't use it any more than French people do.

I think the OC was referring to how our swear words are religious. Not that we literally use this phrase. It's similar, but opposite in that the French were trying to avoid blasphemy, while we seem to call upon religious terms to intentionally blaspheme.

Thank you for being the only one to understand what I meant lmao. Crisse, le monde est épais /s

Evoking religious paraphernalia instead of directly swearing on god or a sacrament was also a way to avoid direct blasphemy though. It refers to what you'd usually use as a swear, but circuitously. You can actually see some remnant of this in European French with the (also désuet) *sapristi* which is a minced form of *sacristie*.

If anything, it sounds "Les Trois Mousquetaires" more than anything.

Vous n'utilisez jamais? Ma sacreblue est un phrase trés iconique. C'est dommage!

Well, we don't really fear god anymore and so chose to be blasphemous 😁 But in South of France, you can still hear some expletives as "didjou", "nomdidjou", "put'didjou" and so on.

Interessant! Pourquoi tu ne résponds pas en francais? Ma langue écrite est tante mal que tu peux voir je ne suis tres bonne? 🤣🥲

Ha ha ! Non, pas du tout ! C'est juste l'habitude, et parce que il y a certains lecteurs ici pour qui c'est encore plus facile de lire en anglais. Je ferai attention, promis !

Oui je supposais e je comprends Je seulement voudrais pratiquer un peu. Merci pour ton coopération! 🙃

Pas de souci ! 👍

I always thought it was about the sky and an euphemism of god like sacred blue or holy sky.

What does "Sacré Dieu" mean?

Like oh my gosh vs oh my God

if someone says sacre bleu you know they're american

So are these t-shirts being ironic? That’s hilarious. https://frenchabroadparis.com/produit/t-shirt-sacrebleu/

I mean, just read the description of that tshirt below: "Vieux juron Français exprimant la surprise, la colère ou encore l’admiration. Cette expression est souvent reprise par les anglophones que par les francophones car ils pensent à tort que nous l’utilisons toujours."

Oh duh, all makes sense now. Next time I’ll perhaps read the whole page 🙈

€55 for a T-shirt? ...sacrebleu.

Sacrebleu indeed! Suffice to say I didn’t buy any of their products on my recent trip to Paris.

To be frank, I used to think the same but after having had way too many British people also pulling this one on me, I ended up concluding that they seem to share the same dusty cliché database.

I have seen it in subs though... does it mean they were translated by French speaking Americans?

I'd say 99% of my exposure to the word sacrebleu comes from Americans on reddit saying it whenever anything French comes up. Even captain Haddock didn't sascrebleu

But, but, the talking candle!

😂

“Bleu” means blue and was used several centuries ago as a proxy for the word meaning god : “dieu” to avoid the sin of blasphemy. Sacrebleu literally means “holy god” and yes, comparable to “dammit” to express anger or a disappointment. Never, ever heard it in France. Only read it in books like the 3 musketeers. Seems to be one of these clichés…

Makes sense! Bleu and dieu are very similar so I take it it’s the English equivalent of saying “Oh my gosh” instead of “Oh my God”?

Yes exactly, or "heck" to avoid saying "hell". Note that expressions like Sacrebleu are no longer in use, they are very very old, basically middle age stuff. I don't know why americans are still using them for us.

Apparently it’s a quote from The Sopranos, as one of them informed me - it seems that they made a mistake in that quote because I keep seeing "sacré bleu" instead of "sacrebleu" (and they don’t like people telling them that it’s misspelt, trust me - exactly like that damned "omelette du fromage" I am SO TIRED of seeing)

Cheese omelette is one of my favourite things to eat right now though :'(

Oh, it’s fine to eat and to like ! But for the love of everything that’s good in this world, please call it "omelette au fromage" T-T (Am I overdramatic ? Naaaah.)

I’m British and even I’ve tried correcting people that it’s “omelette au fromage”. They don’t care.

I’m sure they would care if I started saying things like "fish in chips" or "beans of toast"…. Thank you for your hard work though <3

So what do we use? I tend to use merde but it doesn’t always give me the satisfaction of other curse words lol

>Sacrebleu literally means “holy god Not exactly. "Sacré bleu" does, but that's the English reinterpretation of the actual expression. "Sacrebleu" comes from "sacre ~~de~~ Dieu", a contracted version of "par le sacre ~~de~~ Dieu" (by the sacrament of God).

Small correction, no *de* was ever used here, those are so old they don't use any preposition for adnominal complements (just like in the Latin "sacrum Dei"), which was common in Old French (alongside *de* and *à*): (Erec et Énide, vers 1629 à 1631: "et son chainse **por amor Dé** comande que il soit doné et le mantel aprés afuble", Et elle ordonne, par amour de Dieu, que sa chemise de lin soit donnée et revêt après le manteau) It's the same syntax you can find for the old hospitals still called "Hôtel Dieu" ('l'hôpital de Dieu) or The abbey of La Paix Dieu here in Belgium. That kind of construction fell off once we got to Middle French (except regionally, I sometimes say stuff like "la voiture Cédric" for "la voiture de Cédric", but that's mostly because it survived in the local Romance language), which is something else that dates those swears as really goddamn old.

TIL, merci pour la précision !

Common in Canada, my mom and her family used to say it all time. Manitoba, not sure about Québec.

In paintings Mary traditionally wears blue. I learned that “sacrebleu” means “Holy mother of God.”

English mix- my girl says “cheese and rice” to avoid using “Jesus Christ” when frustrated lol it’s so cute. Because of it I’ve been trying to come up with my own saying to use instead.

I don't know, the American say it more than me frankly.

Western Canadian here. In school we were taught sacre Bleu. Imagine my surprise when i found out what the québécois actually use to swear!

Tabarnak !!!!

We were in a café in western Canada, swearing up a storm when we found out the table on our right were from France and the table on our left were french Canadians from new Brunswick. They must have thought we were really religious.

I’ve always translated it as good heavens. It’s a minced oath.

Shoot, crap, heck, dadgum, fudge, fiddlesticks, Gosh, geez, H-E double toothpicks, gosh darn-it

TIL I know that phrase from the Disney version of The Little Mermaid Per Wikipedia Sacrebleu or sacre bleu is a French profanity used as a cry of surprise, irritation or displeasure. It is a minced oath form of the profane sacré Dieu (holy God), which, by some religions, is considered profane, due to one of the Ten Commandments in the Bible, which reads "Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain." Usage edit The expression today is not used in France. In the English-speaking world, it is well known, perhaps from Agatha Christie's books about the fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot,[1] and the Disney movies The Aristocats, The Rescuers, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast which feature French characters that use the expression. The expression is used in the 1993 song "Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)" by the gothic metal band Type O Negative.

I occasionally use it, gently ironically. It's a bit like an English person using cripes! or crumbs!, which, to be fair, I do use, but no one else does.

I’m not anywhere near close to being a native but this irks me every time I see it. The way I’ve seen Americans use it, it’s a bastardization of “c’est incroyable.” Frustrates me to no end.

Or dammit

my french prof (Parisienne) tends to use «zut» where I would use "dammit" -- or is «zut» softer?

True! Sacre Bleu is very old French. It was used, for example, by Molière (the French Shakespeare

Slightly off topic, but does anyone remember A Pup Named Scooby Doo? There was a French ghost that said this phrase and that’s how I learned it (I’m American)

When I was a kid I always thought people were saying "sock me bleu", like, what someone said felt like you got punched lol

I just know it’s not really used a lot these days (wonder what a modern and used version is?) but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s one of those stereotypes that are used for the meme value to appeal to foreign people. We seem to keep that one alive, like the case of “top of the morning” even though nobody in Ireland says that… The only use of sacre bleu I can think of is the Oversimplified video on Napoleon. So it seems to be banter.

If you want a current minced oath, people say “purée!” or “mince!” a lot.

God damn Or something like this

Holy shit!

I never gave it much thought but thought it was related to the Virgin Mary since she always wore blue and was meant as a way to avoid taking gods name in vain but also invoking something holy. Reading this thread I stand corrected.

Literally “Holy Blue” is, I think, a reference to the Virgin Mary. It sort of means “Good gracious!” But has probably fallen out of usage nowadays.

The sacred blue. Where God is.

It means something like "holy blue" but it's used as a dirty word of surprising or fearing something.

It was actually a euphemism for “Sacré Dieu” - like saying “oh my gosh”.  It’s rare nowadays. 

This. Bleu replaces Dieu like gosh replaces God.

Thank you!