Meaning of Idiom ‘Perish the Thought’
Perish the thought is a standalone phrase used to tell someone not to even think about a negative thing; a wish that something negative mentioned will never happen; a wish that a thought will never become fact or reality. 1Spears, Richard A. McGraw-Hill’s American Idioms Dictionary. Boston: McGraw Hill, 2008.,2Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.,3Jarvie, Gordon. Bloomsbury Dictionary of Idioms. London: Bloomsbury, 2009.
Similar to God forbid and don’t even go there.
Sentence Examples
“If I die before you, I don’t want you to be sad and depressed. I want you to find someone else and be happy,” said Moriss. “Perish the thought!” replied Denise.
“Perish the thought of him ever becoming president again.”
“Perish the thought that the whole war effort of the country should be prejudiced by betraying a military secret of that sort!” 4Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
“I would never leave you! Perish the thought!”
Origin
Appeared in print in 1748 in Handell’s oratorio Johsua by Thomas Morell:
“It never shall be said that our allies in vain implor’d out aid. Perish the thought!” 5Ammer, Christine. American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
The phrase was in regular use by the late 1800s. The word perish is used to mean die, be destroyed, or cease to exist as in ‘let the thought cease to exist.’
