Also:
For the love of God
For the love of Pete
For Pete’s sake
Meaning of Idiom ‘For the Love of Mike’
For the love of Mike is an expression of exasperation, surprise, anger, impatience, dismay, etc. It is also used to add force or emphasis to a statement, often an imperative. 1Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.,2Ayto, John. [http://amzn.to/2vdGvI7 Oxford Dictionary of English Idioms]. Oxford: Oxford U, 2010.,3Kirkpatrick, Elizabeth M. The Wordsworth Dictionary of Idioms. Ware: Wordsworth, 1995.
Sentence Examples
“For the love of Mike, will you please sit down and be quiet!”
“For the love of Mike, why can’t I get this car to run?”
“For the love of Pete, will you please stop playing that violin? I can’t hear myself think!”
“For the love of God, I had no idea she would do something like that!”
“Would you stop interrupting me, for the love of Mike?”
Origin of ‘For the Love of Mike’
For the love of Mike has been used since at least the 1850s. The age of the ‘Pete’ version is unclear.
The prevailing explanation for this idiom is that Mike or Pete are both substitutes for God in the original phrase ‘for the love of God.’ It is sometimes claimed that this was an Irish substitution where generic Irish names were used to avoid directing frustration at God or sacrilegiously invoking him. It may also be that Mike and Pete refer to St. Michael and St. Peter.
James Joyce used ‘for the love of Mike in Ulysses (1922) 4Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
“For the love of Mike listen to him.”
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