Etymology Journal ยท G
Great Scott!
Meaning
- A mild, slightly dated exclamation of surprise. It sounds like something a character in a 1940s radio drama would say.
Vintage, theatrical
Used in a sentence
- Great Scott, I almost missed the train!
- He looked at the bill and exclaimed, great Scott, that is expensive!
- Great Scott, how did you manage to fix that in five minutes?
The backstory
It is widely believed to refer to General Winfield Scott, a 19th-century American military hero. People used it to express awe, and it stuck around as a standard exclamation.
Heard in
Nationwide
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