animals and non-animals

[Joel S. Berson]

At 2/12/2011 11:05 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
>
>On Sat, Feb 12, 2011 at 6:33 AM, Victor Steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > "I swan"
>
>I've heard this in the wild and I've seen it in print, but I've never
>had the impression that the expression had anything to do with the
>bird.
>
>My own *extremely* WAG is that it's some kind of modification or
>distortion of _I swear_.

"Etymology:  probably northern English dialect Is' wan lit. 'I shall
warrant' = I'll be bound; later taken as a mincing substitute for
swear v. Compare swanny v.

U.S. slang.

   I swan, I declare: often in exclamatory asseveration. I swan to
man, a mitigated form of I swear to God."

Joel

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