![]() The phrase originally had the meaning of being sent into the darkest possible servitude, hence its seriously upsetting ideas of betrayal and ruin. Grammar blog Grammarphobia has traced the first instance of the phrase to an 1835 report that a slave had committed suicide rather than be sent downriver. The idea of betrayal inherent in the phrase comes from the fact that such a fate was terrifying. Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin features Tom being sold "down the river." To be sold "down the river" meant to be sent to do manual labor in the Southern parts of the U.S., usually to pick cotton (we'll talk more about that later). Being sold down one was, you guessed it, a reference to the slave trade. The river in question is not a general metaphorical one, but two specific rivers in the American South: the Mississippi and Ohio rivers. Our modern definition of "selling somebody down the river" is betraying them, but as an NPR special on the phrase pointed out in 2014, its origins are a lot more specific than that - and a lot more terrifying. This is one of the more offensive terms still in common modern usage, and it really, really shouldn't be. (Or make up something new - and not racist.) 1. Next time you feel like one of these might describe an innocent situation, clamp a hand over your mouth and reach for your dictionary. Here are five everyday phrases whose racist origins are a lot less difficult to pin down. And let's not forget segregated theatres and public places, as anybody who's ever watched/read To Kill A Mockingbird will remember. Others think it's just classist, because everybody in them was poor. Some people think that it's racist because the people in those seats were often African-American. It means the most ignorant, easily entertained part of an audience (a politician "playing to the peanut gallery" is not getting a compliment), and refers to the cheapest seats in theatres in late-19th/early-20th-century America. There's a serious fight, for instance, as to whether the phrase "peanut gallery" has racist overtones. There are some phrases whose origins are actually pretty hotly debated. Well, at least until you scratch the surface. Centuries of widespread use have smoothed off the racist edges, made them palatable, and given them the entrenched respectability of a long pedigree. The innocuous nature of some of these racist phrases is, in a way, the most horrible part. There are some words and phrases that are perfectly normal parts of the discourse, but whose history points them out as pretty seriously problematic. Modern American English can be really weird - particularly if you know your etymology.
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