"By the living Harry"
I have always wondered about the origin of the term "By the living Harry". It was used frequently by my mother in an exclamatory and mildly threatening tone (the threat of punishment if there were...
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Old Harry is a euphemism for the devil, which I imagine is the meaning here.
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The usual form is "By the Lord Harry!", as in this example from Dickens' Barnaby Rudge, Chap.44:"No, by the Lord Harry! cried Dennis with a noisy laugh.As evinced by the Google hits, the phrase was...
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The OED has the expletive "by the Lord Harry" from 1687. It records "old Harry" as a name for the devil from 1777. "Living Harry" doesn't appear.As to origin, it is just the use of a common name as a...
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So my former-Sunday-School-teacher mother was invoking the Devil against her daughter???Just goes to show how we can use language without really knowing its history or implications, I guess. I won't...
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