heavens to Betsy
heavens to Betsy interjection: good gracious; good heavens.
Interjection
- Good gracious; good heavens.
- "Heavens to Betsy!" he exclaims, clapping his hand to his throat, "I've cut my head off!"1857 May 1, Frederick W. Saunders, “The Serenade: A Tale of Revenge”, in Ballou's Dollar Monthly Magazine, volume v, number 5, Boston, MA, page 419
- Then there's New Age entrepreneur Deepak Chopra, who, in bis 1989 book Quantum Healing, promises a pathway to curing cancer, reversing aging, and, heavens to Betsy, even immortality.2023, Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, New York: Penguin, →ISBN
- Synonyms:
- wow
Synonyms of heavens to Betsy
Origin of heavens to Betsy
Of unknown origins. Speculated to be a euphemism for hell's bells, but there is not sufficient evidence to support this. Attested from 1857.
Questions about heavens to Betsy
- What does heavens to Betsy mean?
- Heavens to Betsy means good gracious; good heavens.
- What part of speech is heavens to Betsy?
- Heavens to Betsy is an interjection.
Words near heavens to Betsy in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: heavens to Betsy (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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