Holy cow! Such a big gorilla in my room!!!

Holy cow! Such a huge gorilla!!

I met Sushil after a year and was astonished at his confidence and spoken English skills. We were talking about his days in the US when Manish walked in.

“Holy cow!”, exclaimed Sushil, “You have reduced a lot. Have you joined a crash diet program?”.

Holy cow – that’s the expression we discuss in this post.

It’s an expression of surprise, it’s an expression of exclamation. It is a much milder form of a slang with a similar meaning, “Holy shit” (obviously you wouldn’t want to use holy shit in front of your parents or teachers or in a very formal setting – you can use holy cow though).

Let’s see the following sequence:

Sumit turned the key in the lock and opened the door.

“Holy cow”, he exclaimed as he entered the room.

It seemed there had been an earthquake in the room. The chairs were thrown on the floor, the table was turned upside down, his laptop bag was lying amidst broken glass from the room window, the printer was lying broken in the center of the room. Someone had entered his room and thoroughly searched it.

Who was it and what could they be looking for?  

Remember, an expression of astonished exclamation.

Some more examples:

1. “Holy cow! How can you lose so much weight so soon? I mean have you joined Kareena Kapoor’s size zero weight loss program?”
2. “1.76 lakh crores! Holy cow! Isn’t their any limit to these people’s greed?”

Sometimes holy cow is also used as a euphemism to refer to certain people or ideas considered sacred and beyond question while they really are not beyond question. This is a completely different usage but very elegant.

Let’s see some examples:

1. The party president is not a holy cow. If he has done something wrong, we have a right to question him.
2. In a rational society, nothing should be treated as a holy cow. Everything should be strong enough to face questions.
3. Religion is not a holy cow. If there are certain outdated and harmful ideas in religion, we should have the strength to question it and the religion should have the strength to face those questions.