Adoro essa expressão do Dylan Dog.
Origin of Dylan Dog’s “Giuda Ballerino!” phrase
The exclamation of the original Dylan Dog (italian) “Giuda Ballerino!“, comes from the first comic book and it is never lost over the years.
This exclamation was used for the first time in the crossover comic Dylan Dog and Martin Mystère “Last stop: the nightmare!” (italian: Ultima fermata: l’incubo!), when in front of the two protagonists a chasm opened over which they saw the Inferno.
The Sclavi reveals that the exclamation belonged to one of his longtime friend, the journalist Gianluigi Gonano, who used it as a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Jumpin‘ Jehoshaphat (Italian : “Giosafatte Salterino“)
Jehoshaphat was a king of Judah (the kingdom of the Jews) some generations after the famous kings David and his son Solomon... But it seams that it is most likely this phrase comes from the different background.
On consulting the Oxford English Dictionary and the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, it seems clear that the name of the king of Judah (which also occurs in several other spellings, most commonlyJehosaphat) was used in the United States around the middle of the nineteenth century as a mild oath, a euphemism for Jehovah or Jesus. The phrase Jumping Jehoshaphat is first recorded from Mayne Reid’s “Headless Horseman” of 1866, but is probably older. It seems to have been in the tradition of exotic imprecations that Americans of that period were so fond of, with the repeated initial sound greatly helping its acceptance.
Dylan Dog comic is still widely popular in former Yugoslavia countries, but do to the original translation error (Judo plesaču — Judas Dancer) this known phrase was never understood properly among Serbo-Croatian language speaking audience.
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