Welcome Back to Sunday & Southern Monthly!
If you missed the previous installments, you’ll be interested in reading Issue 1 where I give a full definition of colloquial and a favorite example of one. In Issue 2 you’ll find out what my youngest daughter does every morning. In Issue 3 you’ll find out what trait I’ve been fighting. In Issue 4 you’ll read about a quirky measurement. Issue 5 was inspired by my oldest. Issue 6 is an attempt to instill patience. Issue 7 provides some musical entertainment.
Here in Sunday & Southern Monthly in an attempt to bring a little southern style, charm, grace, and humor to you once a month, I publish a colloquialism favored in the South ~ a southernism. Anybody heard the phrase ~
What in the Sam Hill?!
SAM HILL
Does this euphemism refer to a real person or is it simply just a phrase of exclamation?
In fact there existed a Mr. Samuel Hill (1857–1931) “King of the Railway” if you will. He was well-known, but not famous for this phrase as “What in the Sam Hill?” enjoyed widespread usage as early as 1839, nearly two decades before the railway tycoon’s birth. (Source: Jill Livingston, 1999, 2011. “Sam Hill Sign”. Retrieved 2011-05-19.)
Although I have to say, his vision and the subsequent erection of a full-sized replica of Stonehenge, fueled for twelve long years by a manic energy, is exclamatory enough in its own right. (Source: Roadside America’s story of Sam Hill’s Stonehenge.)
Perhaps a more likely candidate is a Mr. Samuel W. Hill (1819–1889) a surveyor with a ripe reputation for foul language. Soon his name became a swear word in its own right. Many used the expression “What in the Sam Hill?!” as a socially accepted synonym for “hell”. (Source: Courter, Ellis W. (2005). Michigan’s Copper Country (PDF). Republished by the State of Michigan, Office of Geological Survey.)
Tune in next month {in a month of Sundays 😉 } for the next installment of Sunday & Southern Monthly. You’ll read all about another silly southern saying.
Thanks for reading! Hurry on back now, ya hear?
P.S. Do you have any favorite sayings?
