Jiminy Cricket

Jiminy Cricket is a character in the 1940 film, Pinocchio. He serves as the conscience of the main character, a wooden puppet who longs to become a real boy. Few people realize that "Jiminy Cricket" was originally an exclamation of surprise, a minced oath used as a substitute for the exclamation, "Jesus Christ!" This was considered very vulgar and blasphemous, taking God's name in vain, akin to the even more blasphemous modern form, "Jesus H. Christ!"

MInced oaths are also called pseudo-profanity and are altered forms of words and phrases considered to be profane or blasphemous because of the way they are used. The British have many of them: "bloody" is a shortened form of "God's Blood," "zounds!" is a shortened form of "God's wounds." Minced oaths were/are often used to avoid causing offense or to avoid inviting censorship.

Other minced oaths include:
"poppycock" from the Dutch words pappe kak, meaning "soft dung."
"gadzooks" from "God's hooks," the nails that held Jesus to the cross.
"Ay caramba" from "carajo," a Spanish word for penis.
"blankety-blank" refers to the dashes which were used to "disguise" (ie: d- - n) objectionable words.