by the gods

by the gods adverb: polytheistic form of of by God.

Adverb

by the gods (not comparable)

Polytheistic form of of by God.
- What! you shun / An old friend, Balbus? No! It was not I! / No! by the gods! I never gave consent / To those red days of massacre!1915, Stephen Vincent Benét, “The Last Banquet [[Quintus] Sertorius Speaks, b. c. 72]”, in Five Men and Pompey: A Series of Dramatic Portraits, Boston, Mass.: The Four Seas Company, →OCLC, page 12
- He lifted eyes half-wild with horror in a face the color of yellow mud. “The child, Lady! By the gods, where is the child?”2000 February 12, Sharon Lee, Steve Miller, “Local Custom”, in Pilots Choice, Atlanta, Ga.: Meisha Merlin Publishing, published February 2001, 2nd printing (May 2001), →ISBN, chapter 16, page 124

I won’t try to run from you.’ / ‘Oh yes, by the gods, you’ll explain!’ […] ‘And you’ll help me get back to Earth, or I’ll kill you!2000 March 31, Freda Warrington, “Falthorn”, in The Sapphire Throne (The Jewelfire Trilogy; 2), London: Earthlight, →ISBN, page 107:
By the gods, if your family could see you now.”2009 December 4, Jay McKiernan, chapter 6, in The Twins: A Novel (The Tales of Agramon; 1), Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, →ISBN, page 134:

What does by the gods mean?: By the gods means polytheistic form of of by God.
How do you use by the gods in a sentence?: I won’t try to run from you.’ / ‘Oh yes, by the gods, you’ll explain!’ […] ‘And you’ll help me get back to Earth, or I’ll kill you!
What part of speech is by the gods?: By the gods is an adverb.

Adapted from Wiktionary: by the gods (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “by the gods.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/by_the_gods. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.