holy cow

interjection

Slang.

1. (used to express bewilderment, surprise, or astonishment.)

Word History and Origins

Origin of holy cow¹

First recorded in 1920–25

Idioms and Phrases

Also,. An exclamation of surprise, astonishment, delight, or dismay, as in Holy cow, I forgot the wine, or Holy mackerel, you won! or Holy Moses, here comes the teacher! or Holy smoke, I didn't know you were here too. The oldest of these slangy expletives uses mackerel, dating from about 1800; the one with Moses dates from about 1850 and cow from about 1920. None has any literal significance, and moly is a neologism devised to rhyme with “holy” and possibly a euphemism for “Moses.”

Example Sentences

“We came out of the fog, and I saw that light — it looked like something out of a horror movie,” said Gibbons, now 91, adding: “I thought, ‘Holy cow, how’d they ever build anything like this out in the middle of the ocean?’”

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The sunlit opening of French writer-director Louise Courvoisier’s punchy, sweet coming-of-age debut feature, “Holy Cow,” set in a cheese-making pocket of France’s Comté region, is a lively welcome.

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But like the ancient cheese-making process shown throughout the film in fascinating glimpses of handmade toil — as if a Les Blank short documentary had mixed with a Dardennes brothers drama — “Holy Cow” achieves its own special texture and flavor the more its central character boils, curdles and cools.

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Perhaps most crucially, “Holy Cow” keeps its sights set on being a study in fast-tracked adulthood, minus judgment or sentimentality.

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"When I got my first cheque for $2,000 in a month, I was like, 'Holy cow, this is gonna change my life'," he recalls.

Read more on BBC