Is “honest to gosh” a popular and decent English idiom?
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Track title: Lost Meadow
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Chapters
00:00 Is “Honest To Gosh” A Popular And Decent English Idiom?
01:10 Answer 1 Score 8
01:32 Answer 2 Score 12
01:58 Accepted Answer Score 6
02:21 Thank you
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Full question
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Tags
#idioms
#avk47
ANSWER 1
Score 12
The author is conveying a sarcastic sense of naivete. As if to say "So does this mean that government employees are not all honest, upstanding folks who would never waste public money on frivolous pleasures? Why, I never imagined!"
Someone who had such naive ideas would probably also be exceedingly averse to blasphemous language, and the author is pretending to be such a person.
ANSWER 2
Score 8
Only if you are writing a PG Wodehouse parody or are a small child in the 1950s
It's an old fashioned phrase - and probably even then only used in children's books if you didn't want to use God. There are a few old English phrases/swear words where 'God' is changed slightly so as not to be blasphemous.
ACCEPTED ANSWER
Score 6
I agree with what @JoelBrown said in his comment above: "the author is deliberately affecting an overly mild tone when the situation is one which would reasonably inspire significant frustration or anger over wasteful government spending."
My two cents? The author could have used honest to goodness to achieve the same thing. For what it's worth, here's an Ngram:
