What is the origin of the saying 'What the sam hill?' I have heard it in place of cursing all my life.

Question

My grandfather used this saying all the time when I was a kid, and I still hear people using this phrase, usually as 'What the sam hill is going on here?' or 'What the sam hill do you think you are doing?' I have always been curious where this phrase came from.

Answer 1

There is a story sometimes told (for example in Edwin Mitchell’s Encyclopedia of American Politics in 1946) that one Colonel Samuel Hill of Guilford, Connecticut, would often run for political office at some point in the early nineteenth century but always without success. Hence, “to run like Sam Hill” or “go like Sam Hill”. The problem is that nobody has found any trace of this monumentally unsuccessful candidate.

On the other hand, 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’?” So the tale has long legs.

The expression has been known since the late 1830s. Despite the story, it seems to be no more than a personalised euphemism for “hell”.

Answer 2

As far as the officials at Maryhill know, the phrase predates "our" Sam Hill and refers to a farmer from one of the New England states who ran for public office--but no one knew who he was or from where he came!