Gordon Bennett

For James Gordon Bennett, Jr., a New York newspaper proprietor and playboy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who became widely known for his extravagant lifestyle and shocking behaviour.[1] The first time the expression appears in print was in 1937, in James Curtis's novel, You’re in the Racket, Too.[2] The Oxford English Dictionary places the phrase in the 1890s as an alliteration of gorblimey and again to James Gordon Bennett Jr.[3]

Gordon Bennett

1. (Britain) expression of surprise, contempt, outrage, disgust, frustration.

• good grief

• The Chambers Dictionary, →ISBN
• Cassell's Dictionary of Word & Phrase Origins