"Great Scott!" is an interjection of surprise, amazement, or dismay. It is a distinctive but inoffensive exclamation, popular in the second half of the 19th century and the early 20th century, and now considered dated. It originated as a minced oath, historically associated with two specific "Scotts": Scottish author

Sir Walter Scott Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet (15 August 1771 – 21 September 1832), was a Scottish novelist, poet, playwright and historian. Many of his works remain classics of European and Scottish literature, notably the novels '' Ivanhoe'', '' Rob Roy' ...

and, later, US general

Winfield Scott Winfield Scott (June 13, 1786May 29, 1866) was an American military commander and political candidate. He served as a general in the United States Army from 1814 to 1861, taking part in the War of 1812, the Mexican–American War, the early s ...

Origins

It is frequently assumed that ''Great Scott!'' is a minced oath of some sort, ''Scott'' replacing ''

God In monotheistic thought, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. Swinburne, R.G. "God" in Honderich, Ted. (ed)''The Oxford Companion to Philosophy'', Oxford University Press, 1995. God is typically ...

''. The 2010 edition of the '' Oxford Dictionary of English'' labels the expression as "dated" and simply identifies it as an "arbitrary euphemism for 'Great God!'". Alternatively, but similarly, it has been suggested that it may be a corruption of the South German / Austrian greeting ''

Grüß Gott The expression grüß Gott (; from ''grüß dich Gott'', originally '(may) God bless (you)')Hans Ulrich SchmidBairisch: Das Wichtigste in Kürze(in German) is a greeting, less often a farewell, in Southern Germany and Austria (more specifically the ...

''.

Sir Walter Scott

An early reference to

as the "great Scott" is found in the poem "The Wars of Bathurst 1830" published in ''

The Sydney Monitor ''The Monitor'' was a biweekly English language newspaper published in Sydney, New South Wales and founded in 1826. It is one of the earlier newspapers in the colony commencing publication twenty three years after the ''Sydney Gazette'', the fir ...

'' on 27 October 1830, still during Scott's lifetime; the pertinent line reading "Unlike great Scott, who fell at Waterloo", in reference to Scott's poorly-received '' The Field of Waterloo''. An explicit connection of Sir Walter Scott's name with the then familiar exclamation is found in a poem published 15 August 1871, on the centenary anniversary of Scott's birth: Mark Twain uses the phrase to reference Sir Walter Scott and his writing. Twain's disdain for Scott is evident in ''

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court'' is an 1889 novel by American humorist and writer Mark Twain. The book was originally titled ''A Yankee in King Arthur's Court''. Some early editions are titled ''A Yankee at the Court of King Arth ...

'' (1889), in which the main character repeatedly utters "great Scott" as an oath, and in ''

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn ''Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'' or as it is known in more recent editions, ''The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn'', is a novel by American author Mark Twain, which was first published in the United Kingdom in December 1884 and in the United St ...

'' (1884), where he names a sinking boat the ''Walter Scott''.

Winfield Scott

John William De Forest John William De Forest (May 31, 1826 – July 17, 1906) was an American soldier and writer of literary realism, best known for his Civil War novel '' Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty''. He also coined the term for the Great Am ...

, in '' Miss Ravenel's Conversion from Secession to Loyalty'' (1867) reports the exclamation as referring to

, general‑in‑chief of the U.S. Army from 1841 to 1861: The general, known to his troops as Old Fuss and Feathers, weighed 300 pounds (21 stone or 136 kg) in his later years and was too fat to ride a horse. A May 1861 edition of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'' included the sentence: The phrase appears in a 3 May 1864 diary entry by Private Robert Knox Sneden (later published as ''Eye of the Storm: a Civil War Odyssey''): In the July 1871 issue of '' The Galaxy'', in the story "Overland", the expression is again used by author by J. W. DeForest: A large basalt rock collected by astronaut

David Scott David Randolph Scott (born June 6, 1932) is an American retired test pilot and NASA astronaut who was the seventh person to walk on the Moon. Selected as part of the third group of astronauts in 1963, Scott flew to space three times and ...

on the Apollo 15 mission to the moon in 1971 is informally known as '' Great Scott''.

References

{{Back to the Future English phrases Interjections