Lawks a-mercy is a delightfully old-school British exclamation of shock or surprise — a minced oath that softens 'Lord have mercy' into something you could say in polite company. It belongs to a golden era of Victorian and Edwardian interjections that sound almost comically theatrical today. Still used ironically or affectionately to poke fun at old-fashioned fussiness.
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UK and Irish slang — Cockney, Scouse, Geordie, Yorkshire, Glaswegian, Brummie, Welsh, West Country, plus Irish English. Centuries of regional dialects feeding into modern British and Irish street talk.
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Lawks a-mercy, you've gone and booked us into the haunted room again!
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(UK) A minced oath for "Lord have mercy".
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