What j666 said. It’s an elliptical expression. It has been truncated from the original idiom which would have taken the form of an angry or indignant or rhetorical question. “the fuck” was added to the question as an intensifier. Then in modern usage most of the question has been left off. All that is left is the relative pronoun and the intensifier.
And then even the relative pronoun can sometimes be left off, as in “…the fuck…?”
And WTH is the same, just a different swear.
A minced oath is a euphemistic expression formed by misspelling, mispronouncing, or replacing a part of a profane, blasphemous, or taboo term to reduce the original term’s objectionable characteristics. Some examples include “gosh” for God, “darn” for damn, and “heck” for Hell.
"What the heck ? " is probably a corruption of "What in hell ? " ,which implies that the answer is something from hell.
"What on earth ? " implies that the answer may not be from earth ( or at least that you have to search very far… )
I prefer the pseudo-military version, “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot” (sometimes followed by “, over…”)
Extending that, it’s not too uncommon for either me or Junior Barbarian (both Tom Lehrer aficionados) to sing out after watching a particularly stupid driving maneuver somewhere near us… “Let’s do the whiskey tango foxtrot…” to which the other (or sometimes an alert Mrs. B. or Junior Barbarianette) will add the appropriate “dunt dunt!”
As I was reading the thread, I was going to put forth a hypothesis. Of course by the time I get here, it’s been covered. But what the hell…
I’ve always assumed that ‘What the hell?’ came from ‘What evil being in Hades [is that/made that/made you say or do that]?’ This was shortened to ‘What in the hell?’, and then to ‘What the hell?’ The last became an idiomatic phrase to indicate surprise at something revealed. Another usage might be a shortened form of ‘What [in the name of] the [demons in] Hell [is stopping us from doing this thing that we’re not entirely enthusiastic about’?'; as in ‘What the hell. Let’s go.’ ‘What the fuck’ then came from the already idiomatic ‘What the hell’, but with a more offensive word for effect.
I could be totally wrong, but that’s how I’ve always thought about it.
I like to say it like an old radio identification jingle. ♫Double-yoo Tee Eff OH! ♫
“I’m hip. I know the modern texting jargon my kids use, like LOL - Laught Out Loud - or WTF - Why The Face?”
Oh, FFS I can’t believe this thread.
The WWII comics in my brother’s comics frequently had people saying “What the” as a swear. it was years before I understood that this would not, in fact be what theywould have been saying.
You could take about half the words in the OP, and give them a literal meaning, and the entire paragraph becomes total nonsense. The OP should be held to its own standard of literalness.
Think of it as “What The Fuck is going on here?”
That pretty much covers most uses of it, I think. Sorta like, “Wait, what?”
I think what the hell came before what on earth or what in the world.