Meaning
To betray someone, especially by quietly acting against their interests while pretending loyalty, leaving them in serious trouble. The betrayal is typically severe and often motivated by the betrayer's own gain. Informal but strong; because of its roots in slavery it can sound flippant when used for trivial betrayals. Regional use: American English (understood broadly).
Origin
The phrase originated in the pre-Civil War American slave trade. Enslaved people in the upper South, notably Kentucky and Tennessee, were sold and shipped in groups down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to the New Orleans market and then to cotton and sugar plantations of the Deep South, a fate that meant brutal labor and permanent separation from family. Dictionary.com dates the expression to the mid-1800s, with figurative use beginning in the late 1800s; Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn (1885) already uses it of Miss Watson, who was 'ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river'. Because of this history the idiom carries a heavy charge, and some writers avoid it.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- sell somebody down the river
- sold down the river
- sold up the river (a distinct idiom)
Usage Examples
- The union accused management of selling the workforce down the river to close the merger.
- After promising to protect the small suppliers, the retailer sold them down the river for a bulk discount.
- He felt sold down the river when his co-author took sole credit for the paper.