dialect tidbit

[J. Eulenberg]

I've heard it simply as "great day in the morning!"

I'll add my great-aunt's "good night shirt!!," in which the shirt was
simply added for emphasis.  I never heard her swear, but this one and one
I can't pull together at the moment which started "chicken..." and was
xclearly another of her euphemisms.

Julia Niebuhr Eulenberg <eulenbrg at u.washington.edu>

On Wed, 22 Sep 2004, Beverly Flanigan wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Beverly Flanigan <flanigan at OHIOU.EDU>
> Subject:      dialect tidbit
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> A student of mine from SW Virginia (Roanoke) gave me a phrase that first
> sounds like a phatic greeting but really isn't:  "Good day!" or "Good day
> in the morning time!" or "Great day (in the morning time)!"  It's really an
> interjection, meaning "Wow! Gosh! Heck!" (her words).
>
> Has anyone else heard of this expression?  The student's classmate from
> northeastern Virginia was not familiar with it.  But the more I think of
> it, the more it sounds vaguely like an Irish expression.  Ring a bell?
>