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.
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.
See all British & Irish slang slang on Slangora.
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(UK, dialectal) Lord! (especially as an expression of surprise).
A minced oath standing in for 'Lord' — a softened exclamation used to express surprise, dismay, or exasperation without technically taking the Lord's name in vain. Common in older American rural speech. It also carries a street slang sense in some US communities where 'the laws' simply means the police — the long arm of the law personified into a single word. Two very different vibes, same spelling.
(UK, euphemistic, dated) oh dear, oh my God.
(possibly, dated) A minced oath for Lord.
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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