I have tried to figure this out for SO long... and am coming up with nothing. So, risking being the one with the stupid question... Why on EARTH do people write the word "god" as "G-d", leaving out the "o" and replacing it with a hyphen?
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Anonymous
ANSWERS: 9
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mostly i know of jews who do this, it's a sign of respect to not use his name unless they're praying to him. personally i like their habit. [btw if i'm wrong please let me know, i'd hate to give out false info here =)...]
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I heard Dr. Laura explain this. It had someting to do with the Jewish faith. If God was written, and you were to dispose of the paper or whatever it's written on, you'd have to bury it in Israel or somewhere facing east. Something like that. They add the hyphen to kind of get around this rule, and be able to dispose it anywhere. For online purposes where you really don't 'dispose,' most likely real world habit gone cyber. Hope that made sense, Ms. Alathia.
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Some people hold God so high they feel they are not worthy nor allowed to call him by name. My grandfather would never refer to him as "GOD" he simply called him Father.
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If it's internet or email-related, it's because many places use a filter to keep out certain words or phrases - usually cuss words, but ... If they have the word "God" in their filter, the email will NOT get through. So, replacing one or more letters with a symbol (usually "-" or "*") will let the email go through, if it doesn't have any OTHER words that will filter it out.
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In addition to what's been said already ... Traditionally, Jews when writing the name of God (roughly transliterated YHVH) in Hebrew, they would not write the vowel points for His actual name below the letters, but would write the vowel points for Adonai (roughly transliterated e-o-ah), reminding the pious Jew not to utter the sacred name (Yahweh) but to say Adonai (which means 'lord') instead. This is why English translations of the Bible always translate YHVH as "LORD". (It's also where the idiot Jehovah's Witnesses got the patently false idea that God's name was really JeHoVah. ) Now why anyone should do that with the word God is a strange development, as God is just the translation of the Hebrew word Elohim (God of Hosts/God of gods), and Jews were not forbidden to say it. YHVH, by contrast is untranslatable, but the emphatic "I AM!" is about as close as you can get, and it's His special, personal, intimate, covenant name with Israel, so sacred it was only to be uttered once a year, at Yom Kippur, by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies.
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Maybe so it doesn't look like blasphemy.
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I believe this goes back to the Jews of ancient times who considered His name to be too sacred and holy to be completely written by mere men. Hope this satisfies your search. G-D bless!
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Some people use it as the derogatory of the Lord "damning" something. As an example "G-D that stupid person that cut in front of me" As a Christian, I refer to it to G-D because I don't want to refer back to those words when I am asking a friend to please refrain not saying such words around me.
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they leave out the middle letter because the word God in that sentence might be disrespectful or blasphemous or mabey they just feel unworthy of saying the name much like jews.
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