The Dickens

A few days back, maybe a week or more, I was responding to a text message shortly after I had gotten into bed. As I flipped open my phone to reveal the keyboard the dark room was lit up by the small screen. The muscles adjusting my pupils strained to adjust for the new light. How's that for setting the mood? Well, I opened the phone and accidentally pressed the voice button and my phone started talking to me. It scared the dickens out of me. I remember thinking that, and then wondering what the phrase means. I thought that perhaps it was good if the dickens were scared out of me, I don't know that I need them hanging around. I finally got around to looking it up. A question and answer posting from World Wide Words suggests that "the dickens" is an old euphemism for the devil (http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dic3.htm). Older than Shakespeare, in fact, who used it in one of his plays. If this is an accurate history of the phrase, then I am going to stay with my initial thought, I don't want the dickens in me because now I know that it is the devil. The question now becomes why would we say something scared the dickens out of us when we get really scared? Or better yet, why is the devil in us in the first place? With this new understanding I will not use the phrase anymore. I will make a suggestion for an appropriate substitution: you've scared me like the dickens. I think I will make this part of my revolution, knowing the meaning of the words and phrases I use. As long as there are unsubstantiated Internet resources to help me I think I will be just fine.