A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo term to reduce the original term's objectionable characteristics. Some examples include gosh, darn, dang, fudge and heck.

Many languages have such expressions. In the English language, nearly all profanities have minced variants.

Formation

Common methods of forming a minced oath are rhyme and alliteration. Thus the word bloody (which itself may be an elision of "By Our Lady"—referring to the Virgin Mary) can become blooming, or ruddy. Alliterative minced oaths such as darn for damn allow a speaker to begin to say the prohibited word and then change to a more acceptable expression. In rhyming slang, rhyming euphemisms are often truncated so that the rhyme is eliminated; prick became Hampton Wick and then simply Hampton. Another well-known example is "cunt" rhyming with "Berkeley Hunt", which was subsequently abbreviated to "berk". Alliteration can be combined with metrical equivalence, as in the pseudo-blasphemous "Judas Priest", substituted for the blasphemous use of "Jesus Christ".

It is common to find minced oaths in literature and media. Writers often include minced oaths instead of profanity in their writing so that they do not offend audiences or incur censorship.

Novels

W. Somerset Maugham referred to this problem in his 1919 novel The Moon and Sixpence, where he admitted:

In particular, authors of children's fiction sometimes put minced oaths into the mouths of characters who swear a lot, as a way of depicting a part of their behaviour that would be unconvincing not to represent, but also avoiding the use of swear words which would be considered unsuitable for children to read.

In 1851, Charles Dickens wrote:

The term dickens itself, probably from the surname, became a minced oath when referring to the devil.

In some cases, minced oaths are used which it seems very unlikely people would actually use in real life; examples include "blessed", "by Jove", "golly" or "gosh", "gee", "dang", "dagnabit" and "goldarn it".

Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead uses "fug" in place of "fuck" throughout.