UMTravels

The good news is that with the city at 93 in the city, I’m at the shop in the air-conditioning.

The bad news is that with SeaFair weekend, the traffic through the store sucked.

With the extra down time in the shop, I had time to pen a little article for the Madrona News – “Fish with Red Wine, Sacrebleu!” interestingly enough the phrase is more in use in the US rather than France due to the PBS mystery series.

Usage

The expression today is not in widespread use in the major French-speaking countries France, Belgium or Switzerland,[citation needed] but in the English-speaking world, it is well known from Agatha Christie’s books about the fictional Belgian detective Hercule Poirot.

Most French dictionaries state “sacrebleu” to be equivalent to “sacredieu”.[1] An equivalent English phrase is “Dag Nabbit” (or other variations e.g. Dagnabbit, Dadgum) as the name of God is also substituted as the term bleu in the French curse.[citation needed]

Origin

The phrase originated from the swear words “sacré bleu”, a Marian oath, referring to the color (i.e., “sacred blue”) associated with Mary, mother of Jesus.

Other sources[3] propose its coming from old blasphemous curses relating to God, used from the late Middle-Age (some are attested as early as the 11th century) to the 14th (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)… Those curses may be compared to the archaic English [God’]sdeath, sblood, struth or zounds (God’s wounds). They were considered so offensive that Dieu was sublimated into the similar sounding neutral syllable bleu. The verb sacrer has several meanings, including to crown, to anoint, to name someone [champion, best actor, etc.], and in the past, rarely in France but more common in French Canada, of swear, curse. Therefore, sacrebleu could be in modern French Je jure par Dieu and in English I curse by God, or the more used I swear to God.

And the answer is, yes, think Pinot Noir, light Italian reds, anything without a lot of tannins.

The evening was all about being able to get out of the house at 6:45 in the morning having a little breakfast in my belly – and packing – and having a decent dinner.

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