Word.ws English Dictionary

ye gods

ye gods interjection: used to express surprise or incredulity.

Interjection

  1. (dated, euphemistic, idiomatic) Used to express surprise or incredulity.
    • Ye Gods, what Havock does Ambition make
      Among your Works!1712 (date written), [Joseph] Addison, Cato, a Tragedy. […], London: […] J[acob] Tonson, […], published 1713, →OCLC, Act I, scene i, page 1
    • Would he not far rather lay him down lengthwise along the line of the equator; yea, ye gods! go down to the fiery pit itself, in order to keep out this frost?1851 November 14, Herman Melville, “Chapter 2”, in Moby-Dick; or, The Whale, 1st American edition, New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers; London: Richard Bentley, →OCLC

Origin of ye gods

Seventeenth-century British variant of oh my God, probably intended to avoid blasphemy. Compare Danish I guder.

Words formed from ye gods

Questions about ye gods

What does ye gods mean?
Ye gods means used to express surprise or incredulity.
What part of speech is ye gods?
Ye gods is an interjection.

Words near ye gods in the dictionary

  1. ydromancy
  2. ydronke
  3. yds
  4. YDT
  5. ye
  6. ye gods
  7. ye gods and little fishes
  8. ye of little faith
  9. ye olde
  10. ye wei
  11. ye'd

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: ye 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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-ye gods.ogg.

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