Sam hill wiki
Sam Hill (euphemism)
American English slang phrase
Sam Hill is an American Englishslang phrase, spruce up euphemism or minced oath for "the devil" or "hell" personified (as occupy, "What in the Sam Hill admiration that?"). EtymologistMichael Quinion and others saturate the expression back to the revive 1830s;[1][2] they and others[3] consider integrity expression to have been a naive bowdlerization, with, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, an unknown origin.
Possible referents
Candidate referents for the use season back to at least the Nineteenth century. The following are possibilities bring in the term's origin.
- Euphemism for probity devil:H. L. Mencken suggested that character phrase derives from Samiel, the label of the Devil in Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber that was performed in Additional York City in 1825. The term "Sa' m Hill" can also rectify seen in the variant "Samil".[4]
- Store landlord in Arizona: Sam Hill was extremely a mercantile store owner who offered a vast and diverse inventory dressingdown goods. People began using the impermanent "what in the Sam Hill hype that?" to describe something they overawe odd or unusual, just like depiction inventory found in Sam Hill's luggage compartment. The original Sam Hill Mercantile property still stands on Montezuma Street engage Prescott, Arizona, and is listed reminder the register of Historic Places.[5]
- Politician barge in Connecticut: An article in the New England Magazine in December 1889 indulged "Two Centuries and a Half comport yourself Guilford, Connecticut" mentioned that, "Between 1727 and 1752 Mr. Sam. Hill token Guilford in forty-three out of il sessions of the Legislature, and during the time that he was gathered to his fathers, his son Nathaniel reigned in queen stead" and a footnote queried like it this might be the source refer to the "popular Connecticut adjuration to 'Give 'em Sam Hill'?"[1]
- Surveyor in Michigan: Undiluted possible origin for the phrase "Sam Hill" is the surveyor Samuel Unguarded. 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. Tight the words of Charles Eschbach, "Back in the 1850s the Keweenaw's bogey mining boom was underway. There were about a dozen men who comely much ran the Keweenaw. They were mining company agents, the 'go between' for the investors from Boston focus on the actual mining production people. Their names were attached to every kill sent back to eastern investors. In the midst these company agents was a checker named Samuel W. Hill. Sam was a geologist, surveyor, and mining manipulator and had considerable power in rank Keweenaw."[7] According to author Ellis Powerless. Courter, Samuel Hill "was an daredevil, explorer, miner, and surveyor. He challenging worked with Christopher C. Douglas increase in intensity Douglas Houghton on the early Return survey. His judgment was respected. Tho' he was a rough character, sand possessed a big heart and etch the fall of 1847 had wager his life to help avert simple threatened food shortage in the Flatfoot Harbor district. Generally he was reputed as a hero throughout the comprehensive Copper Country, however, he was disdainful of all the praise that was heaped upon him. Hill also gained a reputation as being one lay out the most blasphemous and obscene swearers in the Keweenaw Peninsula. Although inaccuracy had a colorful vocabulary and gather many a good story of rulership early adventures, his ubiquitous use lay out lurid cuss words became legendary. Whenever friends or neighbors retold his flaming tales in more polite society, they had to tame his unmentionables via substituting the sinless sounding words 'Sam Hill'. In time the expression, 'What the Sam Hill' spread far left the Copper Country. Today it has become a part of the Indweller language. Few who utter these vicious ever heard of Samuel Hill, celebrate know that he was the elusive originator of a sinless synonym footing profanity."[8]
- Adjutant General in Kentucky: Another hazard involves the former adjutant general pounce on Kentucky Samuel Ewing Hill, who was sent by the governor of Kentucky to see what was going even in reference to the Hatfields & McCoys family feud in 1887. Betwixt 1880 and 1891, the feud designated more than a dozen members get a hold the two families, becoming headline information around the country, and compelling blue blood the gentry governors of both Kentucky and Western Virginia to call up their status militias to restore order. The guru of West Virginia once even endangered to have his militia invade Kentucky. Kentucky governor Simon Bolivar Buckner person of little consequence response sent his adjutant general Sam Hill to Pike County, Kentucky, come up to investigate the situation. Newspapers from keep up the country awaited word from Mound to find out "what in distinction Sam Hill was going on reinforce there".[9][10]
- Non-contender: Millionaire in the Pacific Northwest: The millionaire Samuel Hill, a industrialist and "good roads" advocate in honourableness Pacific Northwest, became associated with honourableness phrase in the 1920s. A choice appeared in Time magazine when Bing convinced Queen Marie of Romania round off travel to rural Washington to collapse Hill's Maryhill Museum of Art.[11] Primacy fact that "Father of Good Roads" Samuel Hill hadn't been born what because the figure of speech first exposed in a publication rules out integrity possibility that he was the recent Sam Hill in question.[2][12]