Great Scott

Great Scott! is an interjection of surprise, amazement, or dismay. As a distinctive but inoffensive exclamation, popular in the second half of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century, and now considered dated.

It originates as a minced oath, historically associated with two specific "Scotts", notably Scottish author Sir Walter Scott and somewhat later in the United States, US general Winfield Scott.

It is frequently assumed that Great Scott! is a minced oath of some sort, Scott replacing God. 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 Austrian greeting Grüss Gott.

In keeping with the Victorian-era origin of the phrase, it is sometimes anecdotally associated with Albert, Prince Consort.

An early reference to Sir Walter Scott as the "great Scott" is found in a poem entitled "The Wars of Bathurst 1830" published in The Sydney Monitor on 27 October 1830 (i.e. 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 by-then familiar exclamation is found in a poem published 15 August 1871, on the centenary anniversary of Scott's birth:

Mark Twain also 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 (1889), in which the main character repeatedly utters "great Scott" as an oath, and in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884), where he names a sinking boat the Walter Scott.

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