jimminy crickets

“Don’t swear so, John. What if you should be struck dead with such horrid oaths on your lips!” said his wife soothingly. “Swear so? Jimminy crickets, by all that’s great I’m not swearing; but I am going to express my opinion of this confounded, nine cornered bazoo of a blamed rickety infernal bit of stove pipe—” Exit the wife with her hands over her ears.

1882 September 30, “Slings and Arrows”, in The Boston Daily Globe, volume XXII, number 92, Boston, Mass., →ISSN, →OCLC, page [4], column 1

When he came to the last piece, he thought it seemed heavier than the rest, and leaned over to see better by the street lamp, when to his otter astonishment, he found it was a gold piece; showed it to the policeman, and he told him it was a $2.50 piece. Tim exclaimed “Whew, jimminy crickets! Look at this, Dick. Two dollars an’ a half.[…]”

1891 December 19, Aunt Susie, “Tim’s Christmas”, in Pacific Rural Press, volume XLII, number 25, San Francisco, Calif.: Dewey & Co., […], →OCLC, column 3

“Why, Lovely, what are you doing?” / “Dressing. Didn’t you hear the bell?” / “Jimminy crickets, what a waste, what an awful waste of time,” said the Gutter Pup luxuriously, stretching his arms and yawning. “Say, Lovely, I like you. You’re a good sort and that was a rattlin’ plucky tackle you made yesterday. Say, we’re going to get on famously together, only, Lovely, you are green, you know.”

1908 November 7, Owen Johnson, “Making Friends”, in The Saturday Evening Post […], volume 181, number 19, Philadelphia, Pa.: The Curtis Publishing Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 8, column 2

It hed seven rooms and he ruffed it all over, sides an’ all. / [“Roofed the sides?”] / Thet’s what,—kivered the hull biz with shingles clean down to the ground—an’, Jimminy Crickets! the number o’ little balc’nys, an’ gables, an’ dormant winders, an’ porches thet stuck all over it, was a caution to see.

1894 February, Ella Beecher Gittings, “A Case of Heredity”, in Overland Monthly, volume XXIII, number 134, San Francisco, Calif.: Overland Monthly Publishing Company […], →ISSN, →OCLC, page 133, column 1

“You see, Miss Polly, you have had a very bad fall, and you can’t get away just yet, nor see your friends until you are better.” / “It’s only a scratch,” Polly whimpered. “I can do my work; I got to.” One more feeble effort and she succumbed, with a faint “Jimminy Crickets!”

1908 September, Margaret Mayo, chapter V, in Polly of the Circus, New York, N.Y.: A[lbert] L[evi] Burt Company, →OCLC, page 53