God save the mark

Meanings

interjection

archaicIronic expression of distaste for someone.
The world’s population is atomized among the dying, the ill, the quarantined, the sheltered, the heroically imperilled “essential” (never forget!), and, God save the mark, the blinkered fools.
2020, Peter Schjeldahl, “The Melancholy Gestalt of Isolation”, in The New Yorker
2 more examples
[…] for he made me mad To see him shine so brisk and smell so sweet And talk so like a waiting-gentlewoman Of guns and drums and wounds,—God save the mark!— And telling me the sovereign'st thing on earth
c. 1597 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The First Part of Henry the Fourth, […]”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act I, scene iii]
[…]the gnawing pain, the sick faintness, the deadly stupor, the insatiable animal craving for mere food, all of which sensations are frightful enough to those who are, unhappily, daily inured to them, but which when they afflict one who has been tenderly reared and brought up to consider himself a 'gentleman,'—God save the mark! are perhaps still more painful to bear.
1895, Marie Corelli, The Sorrows of Satan: or The Strange Experience of One Geoffrey Tempest, Millionaire […], 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: J[oshua] B[allinger] Lippincott Company, published 1896, →OCLC, page 7

Origin

Plausibly originally a reference to the mark that a swindler fools: the swindler comments on how dull-witted the mark is and expresses a sentiment that is somewhat like God love them (God bless them, God help them) but carries the flavor of (1) may the Lord save them, because I and other sharpsters sure won't, and (2) thank God for suckers and for the fact that there's one born every minute.

Full word history & related roots →