What does “Sweet, suffering, Job” mean in Derry Girls?
Confrontation Over Stolen Lipstick In A Chaotic Night
C1 English listening practice · Irish English · Picked for people who know a lot
Derry Girls, the Channel 4 series set in 1990s Catholic-school Derry, lives off a special kind of Irish-Catholic outburst: a sacred name softened by a suffering word. Sweet sufferin' Jaysus, Mother of God, Holy Mary mother of divine, and the show’s own Sweet, suffering, Job all share the same shape. The pattern lets a speaker complain without crossing into real swearing: name a holy figure, frame them as long-suffering, slip the annoyance in sideways. Sister Michael, the show’s straight-faced head nun, made these lines her trademark.
In this clip from Derry Girls, a teacher reacts to a girls' dorm lipstick fight with: “Sweet, suffering, Job.”
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this C1 English listening practice video?
How common in written English
How common in spoken English
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-US 2012 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In Derry Girls episodes (Channel 4, 2018-2022, Netflix internationally)
- ▸In Northern Irish stand-up by Catholic-school alumni (Patrick Kielty, Tommy Tiernan)
- ▸In Irish-Catholic family weddings, christenings, and wakes
- ▸In Irish novels by writers raised Catholic (Edna O’Brien, Anne Enright, Sebastian Barry)
- ▸In Irish-Catholic sitcoms and dramas (Father Ted, Mrs Brown’s Boys, Bad Sisters)