I don't know if Grandma would approve

Tues., April 30, 1935 - Cloudy and muddy.  Irene brought the invitation to a school party on Friday.  Got a ride with her and Howard to town.  Mom and I made the dessert for tomorrow nite.  Howard took me to Goodlings.
Wed., May 1, 1935 - Still muddy.  Walked into town, had a 1-1/2 mile ride with H. E. Simon.  My party went along fine.  Mayme won the prize.  Rews didn't come because of roads and Leffler was sick.  The other were Helen, Irene, Ella Mann, Ethel Lewis, Gladys Reichert, Theola Nuss, Marjorie Misfeldt, Mayme Voss and Lydia Kant.  We played High Five.  Iversens took me to Goodlings.
Thurs., May 2, 1935 - Tired as the dickens today.  Cold and cloudy.  Went to bed early.

Grandma has used "the dickens" two posts in a row, so I decided to get to the bottom of that phrase.  Here is what I found, similar to other sites, on grammarphobia.com:

    When Pat was on WNYC, a caller suggested Charles Dickens as the source of “What the dickens!” Actually, it was Shakespeare. Here’s the exchange, from The Merry Wives of Windsor. “Mrs. Page: I cannot tell what the dickens his name is my husband had him of. What do you call your knight’s name, sirrah? Robin: Sir John Falstaff.”

     Well (as Falstaff once said … we think), whaddya know!

     OK, Shakespeare used the phrase more than two centuries before Charles Dickens saw the light of day. But the Bard wasn’t necessarily the first person to use it.

     So who the dickens is responsible for all the exclamations that feature the word “dickens”?

     The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th ed.) says “dickens” used in this sense is a euphemism for “devil,” influenced by the name Dickens.

     So Charles wasn’t responsible for the usage, but the surname “Dickens” may have had something to do with it.

     The Oxford English Dictionary says the expression “the dickens!” is “an interjectional exclamation expressing astonishment, impatience, irritation, etc.; usually with interrogative words, as what, where, how, why, etc.”

     The OED labels it as a slang or colloquial term meaning “the deuce, the devil.” It says the exclamation is “apparently substituted for ‘devil,’ as having the same initial sound.”

     But the dictionary says there’s no evidence to support suggestions that “dickens” evolved from the term “devilkin” or “deilkin” (little devil).

     The OED notes, though, that “Dickin” or “Dickon,” a diminutive of Dick, “was in use long before the earliest known instance of this, and Dickens as a surname was probably also already in existence.”

     So who is the first person to use a “dickens” expression in print?

     The earliest citation in the OED is from Thomas Heywood’s play King Edward IV (1st Part), published in 1599: “What the dickens is it loue that makes ye prate to me so fondly.”

     Did Heywood get there before Shakespeare? Maybe, maybe not. We don’t know for sure.

     Merry Wives was written sometime before Shakespeare died in 1616, but the earliest written version of the play now available is from the First Folio, published in 1623.


     Nevertheless, some scholars think it was written in the late 1590s, so perhaps “dickens” is another “first” for Shakespeare.

Now, I don't know that Grandma would necessarily care that her cute phrase was invoking the Devil, but she likely would have found it interesting.  Or perhaps, being the smart cookie she was, she knew it all along.