Nation, Tarnation

Euphemisms for damnation, used adjectivally and adverbially.

1765.  

1785.  Used in the south of England (Grose).

1788.  

1798.  It seems as if the Irish are as incorrigible as the darnation Bostonians.—The Aurora, Phila., Aug. 14.

1800.  He’ll read a speech,—reads ’nation bad.—Id., April 8.

1800.  The Connecticut claim on Pennsylvania lands must be supported,—a ’nation good trick.—Id., April 8.

1800.  You have told many nation pretty stories in your newspaper.—Id., Dec. 13.

1800.  This was to be sure a nation prowoking disappointment.—Id., Dec. 24.

1801.  You may cheat the Devil of an oath, as the Americans do, and say, Tarnation seize me, or swamp me, if I don’t do this or that!—Col. G. Hanger, ‘Life,’ ii. 151. (N.E.D.)

1819.  

1820.  The time allowed for the notice to reach the non-residents is “nation short.”—St. Louis Enquirer, March 15.

1823.  But for this sudden illumination, our Yankee guests might have taken their breakfasts in their own way, on board their sloop, instead of being indebted to the tarnation tories, as they styled us, for one they could little relish.—‘American Anecdotes,’ p. 124 (Phila.).

1824.  [He said] as how they had ten thousand rattletraps, and kept up a tarnation sort of rattlety bang.—Old Colony Memorial, Plymouth, March 6.

1824.  General Key is a tarnation sly old fox, for one that looks so dull.—The Microscope, Albany, April 3.

1825.  “Nation sleepy—tarnal sleepy—” said neighbour Winslow.—John Neal, ‘Brother Jonathan,’ i. 142.

1827.  [The Militia system] by burning a nation sight of powder, makes way with a good deal of “villainous saltpetre.”—Mass. Spy, Oct. 31: from the Berkshire American.

1833.  I does’n’t vaunt to feel clean at all; it’s so ’nation cold.—Am. Monthly Mag., i. 392 (Aug.).

1836.  She used to make nation good pumpkin pies.—Phila. Public Ledger, July 27.

1838.  I want nothing but to get out of this tarnation basket. I calculate that my heft will be too much for it. Every time it knocks agin the house it jounces my life out.—Caroline Gilman, ‘Recollections of a Southern Matron,’ p. 43 (N.Y.). (Italics in the original.)

1838.  I must say the hogs eat [hommony] a nation faster than we do.—Id., p. 52.

1838.  In the town what I comed from, there was two tarnation smart men who made considerable of a fortin just by minding their own business.—The Jeffersonian, March 24.

1843.  You ’ve got this child into a tarnation scrape this time.—Knick. Mag., xxii. 110 (Aug.).

1847.  [He remarked to me] that it was ‘all-nation hot inside the clap-boards.’—Id., xxx. 14 (July).

1853.