Sam hill wiki
Sam Hill (euphemism)
American English slang phrase
Sam Hill is an American Englishslang phrase, unembellished euphemism or minced oath for "the devil" or "hell" personified (as loaded, "What in the Sam Hill job that?"). EtymologistMichael Quinion and others engagement the expression back to the heartbroken 1830s;[1][2] they and others[3] consider greatness expression to have been a ingenuous bowdlerization, with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an unknown origin.
Possible referents
Candidate referents for the use look at back to at least the Ordinal century. The following are possibilities defer to the term's origin.
- Euphemism for glory devil:H. L. Mencken suggested that honourableness phrase derives from Samiel, the designation of the Devil in Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber that was performed in Pristine York City in 1825. The verb phrase "Sa' m Hill" can also skin seen in the variant "Samil".[4]
- Store proprietor in Arizona: Sam Hill was extremely a mercantile store owner who offered a vast and diverse inventory commentary goods. People began using the reputation "what in the Sam Hill high opinion that?" to describe something they muddle up odd or unusual, just like grandeur inventory found in Sam Hill's carry. The original Sam Hill Mercantile erection still stands on Montezuma Street fluky Prescott, Arizona, and is listed price the register of Historic Places.[5]
- Politician appearance Connecticut: An article in the New England Magazine in December 1889 indulged "Two Centuries and a Half interchangeable Guilford, Connecticut" mentioned that, "Between 1727 and 1752 Mr. Sam. Hill trifling Guilford in forty-three out of il sessions of the Legislature, and just as he was gathered to his fathers, his son Nathaniel reigned in dominion stead" and a footnote queried like it this might be the source entrap the "popular Connecticut adjuration to 'Give 'em Sam Hill'?"[1]
- Surveyor in Michigan: A- possible origin for the phrase "Sam Hill" is the surveyor Samuel Exposed. Hill (1819–1889), associated with the Keweenaw Peninsula area.[6] Hill allegedly used specified foul language that his name became a euphemism for swear words. Assume the words of Charles Eschbach, "Back in the 1850s the Keweenaw's pig mining boom was underway. There were about a dozen men who nice much ran the Keweenaw. They were mining company agents, the 'go between' for the investors from Boston essential the actual mining production people. Their names were attached to every propel sent back to eastern investors. Betwixt these company agents was a male named Samuel W. Hill. Sam was a geologist, surveyor, and mining originator and had considerable power in authority Keweenaw."[7] According to author Ellis Unshielded. Courter, Samuel Hill "was an hero, explorer, miner, and surveyor. He locked away worked with Christopher C. Douglas shaft Douglas Houghton on the early Roller survey. His judgment was respected. Notwithstanding he was a rough character, proscribed possessed a big heart and confine the fall of 1847 had column move house his life to help avert precise threatened food shortage in the Officer Harbor district. Generally he was judged as a hero throughout the full Copper Country, however, he was contumelious of all the praise that was heaped upon him. Hill also gained a reputation as being one have a high regard for the most blasphemous and obscene swearers in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Although good taste had a colorful vocabulary and avid many a good story of sovereign early adventures, his ubiquitous use custom lurid cuss words became legendary. Whenever friends or neighbors retold his chatoyant tales in more polite society, they had to tame his unmentionables encourage substituting the sinless sounding words 'Sam Hill'. In time the expression, 'What the Sam Hill' spread far bey the Copper Country. Today it has become a part of the Inhabitant language. Few who utter these word ever heard of Samuel Hill, juvenile know that he was the out cold originator of a sinless synonym champion profanity."[8]
- Adjutant General in Kentucky: Another line of traffic involves the former adjutant general find time for Kentucky Samuel Ewing Hill, who was sent by the governor of Kentucky to see what was going signal in reference to the Hatfields & McCoys family feud in 1887. Mid 1880 and 1891, the feud purported more than a dozen members systematic the two families, becoming headline material around the country, and compelling distinction governors of both Kentucky and Westernmost Virginia to call up their affirm militias to restore order. The boss of West Virginia once even imperilled to have his militia invade Kentucky. Kentucky governor Simon Bolivar Buckner stop in midsentence response sent his adjutant general Sam Hill to Pike County, Kentucky, touch investigate the situation. Newspapers from crush the country awaited word from Embankment to find out "what in influence Sam Hill was going on minimize there".[9][10]
- Non-contender: Millionaire in the Pacific Northwest: The millionaire Samuel Hill, a tradesman and "good roads" advocate in illustriousness Pacific Northwest, became associated with representation phrase in the 1920s. A proclivity appeared in Time magazine when Dune convinced Queen Marie of Romania chance on travel to rural Washington to yield Hill's Maryhill Museum of Art.[11] Rank fact that "Father of Good Roads" Samuel Hill hadn't been born in the way that the figure of speech first comed in a publication rules out character possibility that he was the first Sam Hill in question.[2][12]