Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- interjection Used to express anger, surprise, or indignation.
from The Century Dictionary.
- An exclamation formerly used as an oath or as an expression of anger or wonder.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- interjection An exclamation formerly used as an oath, and an expression of anger or wonder.
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- interjection Expressing
anger ,surprise ,assertion etc.
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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When you go home tonight, roll some twenty siders with friends, use the word "zounds" in a sentence, then leaf through the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide and marvel at the breadth of the man's imagination.
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When you go home tonight, roll some twenty siders with friends, use the word "zounds" in a sentence, then leaf through the 1E Dungeon Master's Guide and marvel at the breadth of the man's imagination.
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Yet time was, when the innocent word "zounds" was written with the same culpatory dashes and hyphens as the "damns that have had their day;" and "pigs," we suppose, were exenterated in like manner: suggested only by their heads and tails, -- the first letter and the last.
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Who that utters the word "zounds," imagines that he is speaking of such awful and inconceivable things as "God's wounds," though literally he is doing so?
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Natalie Angier weighs in on the human proclivity for cursing in a lengthy essay in the NYT: "The Jacobean dramatist Ben Jonson peppered his plays with fackings and "peremptorie Asses," and Shakespeare could hardly quill a stanza without inserting profanities of the day like "zounds" or "sblood"
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BTW, did you know that zounds! is a foreshortening of God's Wounds?
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Labels: comics comments: annie said ... zounds! where did you meet this amazing scoundrel of graphic wonder!
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June 3, 2009 at 7:35 am uh ohes… parrothead starting to zounds like Igor….
Da dusts bunnies quit - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
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He was in deep awshucks mode, even admitting twice -- zounds!
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February 7, 2008 at 10:45 am fear… is zounds liek… Boing boing boing…
Did you heer dat? - Lolcats 'n' Funny Pictures of Cats - I Can Has Cheezburger?
sionnach commented on the word zounds
God's wounds!
February 14, 2007
arby commented on the word zounds
Compare crikey ("Christ kill me") and blimey ("God blind me"). I forgot about this one tho.
July 19, 2007
reesetee commented on the word zounds
And how about bloody (thought to have come from "by Our Lady")?
July 19, 2007
minerva commented on the word zounds
Compare Oons (also God's wounds)
October 11, 2007
ruzuzu commented on the word zounds
"I had noticed a strange apparition there and hoped to see it again--a tall woman sitting alone, dressed in what I took to be the height of fashion. One day she reappeared. She wore a hat resembling a nest on which an exotic bird was resting, and an elaborate dress of what I think used to be called 'changeable satin,' blues and greens of a peacock's feathers intermingling. Before eating it was necessary that she remove her gloves and raise her veil with gestures of apparently uncalculated grace. Zounds! What was this?"
--Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder
September 4, 2010
nayanlaldas commented on the word zounds
sky.....
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January 15, 2012