Opening in a Bohemian club among actors and stage-dealers, Sharman sets out to trace the history of the oath. He covers ancient and biblical swearing, medieval and Elizabethan oaths, the British habit that foreigners took as a national shibboleth, the fate of words that earned a dog a bad name, and how the phrase ‘by Jingo’ gave politics a new word.
An entertaining Victorian study of bad language for word-lovers and social historians. Download the free EPUB.