Begorrah and Faith: A Rebuttal

Faith and Begorrah! A term I've heard used a few times in my life, such as Futurama. But what a strange combination of words. What's a Begorrah? Why is it always paired with faith. It is with these burning questions in mind that I ventured to Dictionary.com.

begorrah

exclamation

 old-fashioned informal Irish English (also begorra)

Fair enough. One issue down. Though the usage examples don't help much: "They've never heard anyone say "Begorrah"." Well done. That surely puts it into context.

Following this massive discovery, I decided to Yahoo the term and ask why? This is what I discovered on the website Shunspirit:

"The first recorded use of "begorrah" was in 1839, in the novel "The Kellys and the O’Kellys: Landlords and Tenants" by English novelist Anthony Trollope."

""Arrah" is an expression of disbelief. It is often used alongside "begorrah", which is a euphemism for the phrase "by God"."

Faith and by God. Yeah. I can get behind that. Still seems like a weird thing to say but that's just language. People say some weird shit and it makes it into the zeitgeist. Also, Be Jabbers means by Jesus. 10/10. No notes.

Language is a funny thing. We try to patrol it so much but it's just a naturally evolving entity. People are going to make new words and say new things. As long as the communication is still getting through, it's doing it's job. Even if it isn't following language rules.

Warhammer 40,000 has a simplified solution to this. They have High Gothic and Low Gothic. Low Gothic is the normal back and forth English we speak today and High Gothic is basically Latin and is what is used for any official documents or by the government. So, you have one that just does what it wants, and the other that is locked in with rules so that official documents can be understood.

Of course, be Jabbers, everyone dies in Warhammer! So, maybe we shouldn't copy them too closely.