for crying out loud

Example: “For crying out loud, stop leaving your socks on the stairs!”

Origin: A minced oath — a euphemism built to sound close enough to a forbidden phrase to carry its emotional punch, while swapping out the actual blasphemy for something inoffensive. The phrase stands in for "for Christ's sake," letting a speaker vent real exasperation without invoking a religious name directly. American in origin, dating to around 1900, with a clearly documented use by 1924 and likely some circulation before that. The American cartoonist Thomas Aloysius "Tad" Dorgan is often credited with the phrase, though it remains unclear whether he actually coined it or simply helped popularize an expression already in the air.