Euphemisms. 'What the dickens!' 'What the heck!' Expressions. '

'What the dickens!' had me puzzled. It's an expression I've spotted twice in novels written during the Victorian period, most recently cropping up in 'Jane Eyre'. Surely I reasoned, it can't have been in use during Charles Dickens lifetime, who was very firmly a Victorian. But no, apparently it was a euphemism for the devil; the expression first found in print in Shakespeare's 'Merry Wives of Windsor'.

'What the heck', is a later expression in the same vein; 'heck', being a euphemism for hell. According to the Oxford English Dictionary both expressions occur only 0.01 times per million words.

With euphemisms less in vogue today, both sound and read rather quaintly; although charming compared with many modern alternatives.