great Caesar's ghost
great Caesar's ghost interjection: an exclamation of astonishment; good Lord.
Interjection
- An exclamation of astonishment; good Lord.
- 'By the great Caesar's ghost, I believe you! You're the stupidest dunderhead I ever saw or ever heard of, so help me Moses! The idea of you being a pilot—you! Why, you don't know enough to pilot a cow down a lane.'1883, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], “A Cub-pilot's Experience”, in Life on the Mississippi, Boston, Mass.: James R[ipley] Osgood and Company, →OCLC
- Great Caesar's ghost, what is it this?1936, F. Hugh Herbert, The Case of the Black Cat, spoken by Perry Mason (Ricardo Cortez)
- Synonyms:
- great googly-moogly, good golly, wow
Synonyms of great Caesar's ghost
- great googly-moogly
- good golly
- wow
Origin of great Caesar's ghost
Allusion to the play The Tragedie of Iulius Cæsar by William Shakespeare, in which Roman leader Julius Caesar’s ghost appears to Brutus. Used as euphemism in place of good God or similar expressions. Made popular in the 1940s and 1950s by the Superman radio program and comic books as a catchphrase of the character Perry White. The exclamation "Great Caesar's Ghost!" appears in the 1876 novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain.
Questions about great Caesar's ghost
- What does great Caesar's ghost mean?
- Great Caesar's ghost means an exclamation of astonishment; good Lord.
- What part of speech is great Caesar's ghost?
- Great Caesar's ghost is an interjection.
Words near great Caesar's ghost in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: great Caesar's ghost (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.
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