more language fussery. [anti-christian talk]
i have -100 problem with using swears all the time, including christiany swears because whatever (also a sense of entitlement from having been fucked up by being raised baptist).
hell, i love saying “jesus christ on a stick” (and my old catholic coworker got a, ah, kick out of it too). goddamn, jesus fuck, christing hell — all good.
but maybe i don’t feel so good saying “thank god” or “thank heavens” save, perhaps, in a sarcastic sense.
wibbly feelings.
and i have always been opposed to “thank goodness” in its literal meaning because, ugh, good/evil paradigms
so mostly i’ve used “thank fuck” (especially good where extreme emotions are involved)
but like, hm. one, can’t always say that (hello again, wtf problems; ahahaha should my solution be “thank quoi”?)
and two, what am i thanking. cursing? cool. sex? whoa no opposite of cool.
i will very very like continue using thank fuck, because interjections. but what would be a more ~intentional~ phrase? (i add squigglies bc sometimes i get irritated by all the overemphasis on intentionality / mindfulness, because yo dissociation)
right now i’m at “thank the ‘verse” which is a shitty firefly reference but is short and, yeah ok, “thank you universe for working like this” is good for me. kinda like thanking my computer, that sorta non-sentient-this-was-kinda-your-job-but-hey-actually-thank-you deal.
what do you all say, or what would you ideally say if you could magic your brain words?
epochryphal 
It’s interesting, because I don’t think I use “thank x” as a phrase particular often. I was raised in a, uh, let’s say a household where language was pretty heavily policed (words I was not allowed to say growing up included: stupid, dumb, sucks, screw, dick, tool, douchebag or any derivation thereof including douchecanoe, crap, “God” in any type of exclamation, “Christ” or “Jesus” in any exclamation, any swear word, etc.), which meant that my brother and I got quite inventive with our expletives. (“Holy carp” was definitely one of my favorites, although there was also a period early in my fieldwork where I would say “oh my tiny shrine gods.”) I still don’t swear, although my language has gotten a lot more relaxed (I will occasionally say “crap” which SHOCKS people I grew up with). I think my inclination would be to go for “thank goodness,” mostly because of being drilled as a kid, but I’ll mix that up with a lot of more specific and often sarcastic thanks like “thank the university bureaucracy gods.”
Also, I’ve heard “thank the universe”/”thank the ‘verse” from other folks before!
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Super interesting! I was also not allowed to swear or say crap or ANY substitutes; even “oh my gosh” was unacceptable because, uh, its intent was to replace something blasphemous, therefore it was also blasphemous and so was anything said in that context…so basically, no exclamatories or interjections whatsoever.
(no using “holy” outside proper religious context, no saying “cheeze-its” outside the actual food, no “golly gee” or anything I tried from old television shows, nope.)
Super interesting that we’ve gone such different directions!
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Ah, see, blasphemy was never framed as the issue because my family is TECHNICALLY not religious. (My mother is definitely a Christian-flavored theist and was HORRIFIED by my brother being an atheist, but we weren’t raised with any particular religious tradition and both my parents are pretty allergic to churches.) So “holy X” and “oh my gosh” were never considered an issue. It’s unclear why, say, “Oh my God” was an issue then–there were a lot of rules in my family that I sort of accepted growing up and it’s only now that I’m like ?????
(I should also note that I definitely have an association between swearing and violence/abuse because of Things, which might be why I continue to avoid it now? But on the other hand all my roommates swear up a storm [ha, Boston] and I don’t have an issue with that, so… *shrugs, shrugs*)
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First thing that comes to mind for me is just “thanks be”, if you don’t mind sounding like someone in like, a medieval fantasy novel (not necessarily a bad thing!). It is apparently derived from “thanks be to god” , though you could reinterpret it to mean anything really, but that might be a sticking point.
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I was just thinking about this earlier. Not the linguistic problem itself, but the situation — the spawning of gratitude in a context where there’s no apparent source to thank. I’ll admit to saying “thank God” even at times when I don’t actually attribute the outcome to God. Because this thankfulness manifests and it’s like it just needs to go somewhere.
I wonder why we do that.
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I figure it’s partly cathartic or something – when you feel that release after something you were stressed about turns out ok and you just want to verbally express it. I’d guess it’s the same impulse that makes people swear when they get frustrated. I’m sure there’s been linguistics work done on this, somewhere…
It’s also largely just a learned habit though, I assume, since I’m born and raised atheist and I still say “thank god” all the time just because that’s a thing in English.
Also, “thank all the factors that went into this including random chance” just doesn’t have the same ring to it…
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I tend to say ‘thank the gods’, nowadays – my parents had a ban on saying ‘thank god’ and ‘oh my god’ and I find the former even weirder, because what god wouldn’t like being thanked?
I also tend to say ‘thank fuck’ and ‘thank goodness’, and tend to interpret the former as being about ’emphatic thanks’ rather than thanking anything in particular.
Also I definitely thank my computer and phone for working sometimes, though mostly in a sarcastic way…
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