don rumfeld's colloquial language

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Wed, 8 May 2002 11:59:43 AM Eastern Daylight Time, Grant Barrett <gbarrett at WORLDNEWYORK.ORG> writes:

>I particularly liked [Secretary Rumfeld's] "way in the dickens out of line" yesterday.
>
>"Dickens" is apparently a favorite of his:
>
>"get the al Qaeda and the Taliban the dickens out of Kabul"
>
>"it's expensive as the dickens."
>
>"he is having a dickens of a time communicating with his
>people."
>
>"They want the al Qaeda the dickens out of their country..."

Not very interesting.  Rumfeld simply uses "dickens" or "the dickens" where most people would say "hell".  Try substituting "hell" in each of the examples above.

My understanding is that "[the] dickens" is a euphemism for "the Devil".

"She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes
 She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes
     She'll be coming like the dickens
     With a noise to scare the chickens
 She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes"

(the above variation was in a piano textbook; I have never seen it elsewhere)

Did Charles Dickens get a lot of razzing due to his name?  And did that have anything to do with his idiosyncratic choices of names for his characters?  "Matt Drudge, the Internet columnist with the Dickensian name..."

    - Jim Landau