I came across an expression I’ve never seen before when reading a Kate Atkinson novel. A quick internet search netted little information apart from a possible cockney origin as a distorted form of “god, love me”. Does anyone have any more information on meaning, origin, and usage?
Update
Here is the excerpt from the novel:
‘You’ve been in a fight!’ Amelia looked at him for the first time but when he caught her eye she looked away. ‘How exciting,’ Julia said.
‘It was nothing,’ Jackson said. (Just someone’s trying to kill me.)
‘What day is it today?’ ‘Tuesday,’ Julia said promptly. Amelia grunted
something that sounded like ‘Wednesday.’ ‘Really?’ Julia said to her.
‘Cor lummy, how the days fly, don’t they?’ (Cor lummy? Who said things
like that? Apart from Julia?) ‘I always think,’ Julia said, ‘that
Wednesdays are violet.’ Julia seemed in an exceptionally merry mood.
‘And Tuesdays are yellow, of course.’
Best Answer
It is indeed a euphemistic or 'minced oath' version of "God love me" - with the verb, here, in the optative mood ("may God love me" or "as I hope God loves me") to invoke the Deity as guarantor of the speaker's sincerity. An analogue is "corblimey" < "God blame me", that is, May God impute sin to me (if I'm not speaking the truth).
It's 'cockney' in the broad sense of 'colloquial lower-class British', but it's not restricted to the area within earshot of Bow Bells and it's not rhyming slang.