Gadzooks!
interjection

- an exclamation of surprise or annoyance

I just love this weird and wonderful interjection, which would have all but disappeared from our language but for HRH Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.

Upon seeing a new portrait of himself by Stuart Pearson Wright in which he is bare-chested, with a bug on his shoulder and a plant growing out of his finger, he exclaimed: "Gadzooks! As long as I don't have to have it on my wall."

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ETYMOLOGY

"Gadzooks" is claimed to be an alteration of "God's hooks", the nails by which Christ was fastened to the cross. It's one of a set of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century euphemistic oaths that used "gad" as a thinly disguised version of "God".

What could a German equivalent be? Maybe Sapperlot!, Mist!, Herrschaftszeiten (nochmal)!, or simply Sch-----!

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OTHER USES

You may also come across Gadzooks as

- a British pop music television programme which aired on BBC2
- a T-shirt retailer acquired by Forever 21
- a dragon from the novel series "The Last Dragon Chronicles"
- a Mexican restaurant in New York "Gadzooks Enchiladas and Soup"