this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2024
12 points (87.5% liked)

English usage and grammar

364 readers
1 users here now

A community to discuss and ask questions about English usage and grammar.

If your post refers to a specific English variant, please indicate it within square brackets (for instance [Canadian]).

Online resources:

Sibling communities:

Rules of conduct:

The usual ones on Lemmy and Mastodon.. In short: be kind or at least respectful, no offensive language, no harassment, no spam.

(Icon: entry "English" in the Oxford English Dictionary, 1933. Banner: page from Chaucer's "The Wife of Bath's Tale".)

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

The first time I came across the usage of this phrase was in the movie Hellraiser, and I had no idea this was a common saying. Clearly though, there must be a double meaning there in the movie that I couldn't fully grasp without knowing the more colloquial meaning.

The description on Wikipedia is unfortunately not enough for me, I would like to see examples. And it's very hard to find those because Google gives me mostly links to religious websites.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] notabot@lemm.ee 9 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

'Jesus wept' is the shortest verse in the bible, so it's sort of used to invoke supernatural protection (I say sort of as it's really just an exclaimation nowadays, even by those who aren't religious).

It's mostly just used when you witness the result of something going badly.

[โ€“] TragicNotCute@lemmy.world 2 points 8 months ago

This is the only context that makes sense to me. We had to say bible verses to get our mail at church camp. That was a classic one to use.