In By the Shores of Silver Lake, Laura Ingalls is supposedly shocked when her cousin Lena speaks a wicked word boldly.
That wicked word is gosh. Of course, in Laura’s day, words like gosh or expressions like gosh darn were alterations of “God,” which polite prople would never use incorrectly.
Gosh wasn’t even included in Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary until after 1892. By the time the “Little House” books were written, however, it was widely acceptable and only considered as a word used to show mild surprise, even though it was still a word derived from the word god.
In On the Banks of Plum Creek, Pa returns from working the harvest back east and says: “Gosh! It’s good to be home.” And Laura herself wrote in a letter to daughter Rose that her father never used strong language, but was known to say “gosh all hemlock” now and again. He used the expression in The Long Winter.
