Talk:Sacrebleu
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"sacrebleu" or "sacredieu" is always written in one word without accent, the 'e' in the middle being pronounced like a faint and short 'eu' (IPA [ə]).
It seems very unlikely that "sacrebleu" derives from the blue colour of Mary, a XIXth century fashion, or the wounds of Christ ("un bleu" may be a bruise, a haematoma, but in no case a wound). More likely, it comes from old blasphemous curses by God, used from the late Middle-Age (some are attested as early as the XIIth century) to the XIXth at the latest, with many variants : morbleu or mordieu, corbleu, palsambleu, jarnidieu, tudieu, respectively standing for mort [de] Dieu (God's death), corps [de] Dieu (God's body), par le sang [de] Dieu (by God's blood, the two latters possibly referring to the Eucharistic bread and wine), je renie Dieu (I deny God), tue Dieu (kill God)... I believe those curses should be compared to the english [God']sdeath, sblood, struth or zounds (God's wounds ?).
They were so offensive that "Dieu" was deformed into the neutral syllable "bleu" which sounds similarly, but doesn't mean anything in that case. A poster in this forum claims Bleu was the King's dog, but i am skeptical.
The verb "sacrer" has several meanings, including to crown, to anoint, and nowadays to name someone [champion, best actor, etc]. But here, it's probably the old meaning, rarely used in France but more common in French Canada, of swear, curse. Therefore, sacrebleu = je sacre par Dieu = I curse by God.
Nowadays those words are totally obsolete, unless you want to sound "mediaeval" or "classical". Nevertheless, they are still in the modern dictionaries.
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- Why not put these data into the actual article? You seem to have the sources (which you should include in your contribution), yes, please go ahead. Looks good. Dieter Simon 01:44, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
- Oops, you have done, sorry, ignore previous. Well done. Dieter Simon 01:49, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
The ending of the article seems to suggest that English-speakers imagine that French people still go around saying "Sacre Bleu!" all the time. I would suggest that anyone who thinks about it is aware that the phrase is about as "authentic" French as wearing a white and black striped shirt with a red bandana tied around the neck with a pointy little moustache and beret etc. In other words, it's a stereotype, it's a convention, belonging more to the stock Frenchman than to anyone who ever lived after 1960. English-speakers recognize this, and when we invoke the phrase, we do so in the spirit of old-timey theatricality, a bit like saying "Elementary, my dear Watson."Priceyeah 02:40, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
