Drat

Drat is a predominantly British imprecation or expression of annoyance, now fairly dated, commonly applied to things or situations, as in drat it! , but occasionally to people, as in drat the man! Although it means virtually the same as damn or curse in their weakened senses, the term is seldom applied personally in the manner of damn your eyes! The origin is religious, being an aphetic or shortened version of od rot! , itself an abbreviation of God rot! , found in forms such as God rot your bones! and other such curses. Obviously, with the erosion of both the name of God and the verb, the formula lost force. Drat is recorded only from 1815, but became very fashionable, to the point that the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, who used the form frequently in his novels, has this ironic instance in Barchester Towers (1857): “The quintain [post] was ‘dratted’ and ‘bothered’ and very generally anathematised by all the mothers” (326). Dickens has a typical usage in Bleak House (1852): “Drat you, Be quiet!” Although the term is still current in British usage and the erstwhile colonies, it is generally confined to older speakers. Although reported in American usage, it is generally unrecorded in slang dictionaries.