Green’s Dictionary of Slang

damnation bow-wows n.

also deminition bow-wows, demnition..., infernal..., demnition bow-bows, dingnation bow-wows, terminal bow-wows
[apparently coined by Charles Dickens in Nicholas Nickleby (1838–9)]

a euph. for SE hell.

Show quotations
[[UK]Satirist (London) 26 May 3/2: ‘Higgins, you damnation ass’].
[UK]Dickens Nicholas Nickleby (1982) 821: It’s all up with its handsome friend; he has gone to the demnition bow-wows.
[US]Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 29 Nov. 8: [ipc. caption] A wayward girl’s determination to go to the demnition bow-wows temporaily baulked by a former friend.
[US]Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 30 Dec. 2/2: Knocked into everlasting smithereens—gone to the ‘demnition how wows’.
[Can]Twillingate Sun 7 Sept. n.p.: Before November we contemplate calling a meeting, and will pass resolutions containing advice to the Government, which, if followed, will prevent the country from going to the damnation bow-wows.
[US]L.A. Herald 13 Nov. 6/2: I’ll just make up with her long enough to send you to the dingnation bow-wows, and then I’ll cut loose.
[US]Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 11 Jan. 3/3: If our great and glorious country Is to be saved from the demnitlon bow-wows [...] isn’t it about time that all hands settled down to the solid affairs of life?
[US]Bismarck Dly Tribune (ND) 23 Aug. 8/2: From a man who lives in Connecticut come ‘gol dast it’ and ‘by the terminal bowwows’.
[US]H.A. Franck Zone Policeman 88 67: You felt an itching to seize him by the collar [...] and shake him till his teeth rattled for tossing himself so wantonly to the infernal bow-wows.
[US]F. Packard Adventures of Jimmie Dale (1918) I iv: Break his heart at witnessing the young master he had dandled on his knees going to the damnation bowwows.
J.H. Tilden Constipation Ch. III on SoilAndHealth.org 🌐 The thought that the body can wabble itself into health, if its environments and habits are not too belligerent, seems never to dawn on the average mind, and certainly never on the priests of the various curing systems, who know, God bless them, that if it were not for them, health would go to the damnation bow-wows.
[US]Dos Passos Manhattan Transfer 105: Remember to give Lily Herf Joe Harland’s love even if he has gone to the demnition bowbows.
[Aus]E. Curry Hysterical Hist. of Aus. 27: Do you want the country to go to the deminition bow-wows?

In exclamations