etymology - What is the origin of "holy smoke"?


What is the origin of holy smoke?


To what is holy smoke referring?



Answer



After doing a little work on this, I'm quite certain holy smoke is not a minced oath nor an obscuration or euphemism for any more blasphemous exclamation. Its use as an exclamation also predates the Kipling quote by at least a decade. I found this example from a poem by Cormac O'Leary in an 1882 edition of The Reading Club, a collection of prose and poetry (date check on p. 102):


enter image description here


I found several other references from the 1880s as well. @Master's comment is correct—and significant. Several of the early examples of its use read by the holy smoke. This is one reason I don't believe the exclamation is a euphemism for anything else. It was simply a shortening of this oath. And of the origin of this oath? I think @Chris Dwyer's answer nailed it. Google Books' listings of the phrase from the same time period are replete with religious references to "holy smoke." A closer look at most of them reveals that their context is in fact one of sacrifice or burnt offering as in this 1863 exegesis of a passage from Isaiah:


http://books.google.com/books?id=oH8NAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA417&img=1&zoom=3&hl=en&sig=ACfU3U0HQzu2f6-IpHaIUbeZeKSj9dN3qA&ci=96%2C650%2C743%2C188&edge=0


Michael Quinion's discussion of the phrase at World Wide Words points out the same sacrificial origin. For lack of a clear connection, however, he concludes that holy smoke was likely "invented anew as a mock-religious exclamation and mild oath on the model of the older holy Moses." I disagree. I think the oath by the holy smoke is a clear connection between the holy smoke of burnt offerings in Christian writings and the later shortened exclamation we still hear today.


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