My Spectacular Vernacular: Zounds

I’ve liked this word since studying ‘Othello’, but my interest was stimulated again recently by the movie ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’. It was my second favourite thing they said in Othello, first being ‘they’re making the beast with two backs’, it’s a great way to talk about adult things and have kids not have any clue what you’re on about. It was also my second favourite thing in ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel’, the first of that being ‘Sink me’. Zounds was a swear word and a contraction of God’s wounds. This has been explained in two ways, first it’s blasphemous to say that God could have wounds, or it’s referring to Jesus and the wounds that were inflicted on him for our sins. Whichever one it is people don’t use it now and probably wouldn’t be offended by it.