Stahlke Adoption

American Slang

In a movie that we watched recently at home, one of the characters yelled "What in the Sam Hill was that?" I didn't think twice about it, but one of our kids asked me "Who is Sam Hill?" It had never crossed my mind to think about the origin of this euphemism.

Many sources describe Sam Hill as a personification of the devil, probably used to avoid saying the "H" word. Some sources mention that the phrase originated as early as the 1800s.

The Wikipedia article on "Sam Hill" lists several possibilities as to the origin of the phrase. Who knows what's accurate but here are the ones I liked the best:

". . . an article in the New England Magazine in December 1889 entitled "Two Centuries and a Half in Guilford, Connecticut" mentioned that, “Between 1727 and 1752 Mr. Sam. Hill represented Guilford in forty-three out of forty-nine sessions of the Legislature, and when he was gathered to his fathers, his son Nathaniel reigned in his stead” and a footnote queried whether this might be the source of the "popular Connecticut adjuration to ‘Give ‘em Sam Hill’?"

H. L. Mencken suggested that the "Sam" in the phrase derives from Samiel, the name of the Devil in Der Freischütz, an opera by Carl Maria von Weber that was performed in New York in 1825.

Another possibility for the origin of this expression is from the Swedish word for "community" which is "samhället". Some Swedish immigrant to the United States might have said, "Nu ver in de samhället has Johnny gone to?!", and it became anglicized, repeated, and immortalized."

Leave it to the Swedes!

posted by Stahlkes @ 10:08 PM