My belief is that it came from “Well, I swanee…” as in the Swanee River. Why that makes any more sense then “I swan” is beside me, but I can recall from the 40’s and 50’s people I knew saying the Swanee variation. It was a substitute for things like “I declare” or “I’ll be dipped in shit” or similar utterances.
I would regard the Swan dishwashing thing as an after-the-fact explanation that resembles so many internet bits of wisdom from people who never were there to start with. I believe at least 70% of the explanations for word origins and catchphrase meanings that we get from latter-day etymologists and internet “authorities” is just guesswork, with no more foundation than a decent imagination and a flair for the bizarre.
For some reason Swanee’s always been inordinately loved as a word. Stephen Foster’s Old Folks at Home was originally “way down upon the Pee Dee River” and even appeared as such in a couple of very early sheet musics but was changed to Swanee very soon in spite of their being no such river (there’s a Suwanee River- runs from the Okeefenokee Swamp to the Gulf of Mexico, an extremely inhospitable area not inhabited long enough when Foster lived to likely have many old folks at home there). I can’t remember the original subject of Caesar & Gerswhin’s song that Jolson made famous but it wasn’t the S(u)wanee but another river, but they liked the sound of Swanee better. Somehow it diverted its course into the vernacular as well- I’ve seen it used as a brand name, dog name, horse name, and many other different ways. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if “I swan” came from it.
“Kidney medicine”= beer (used by people who don’t like to admit they drink)
“The elephant’s on the monkey’s tail” means almost over
(From an old riddle: ‘What’d the monkey say when the elephant stepped on his tail?’ ‘It won’t be long now’.)
“I’m only gonna shoot my half” means “I’m going to force somebody’s hand”.
Also from an old tale involving an elephant: Two men go into partnership on an elephant and take it around to small towns and charge admission for rides. They have a falling out when one partner insists the other partner is cheating him out of his share of the profits, and the partner who feels cheated (Angry Partner) demands the second partner buy him out. When the second partner refuses the Angry Partner picks up a gun and tells him he’s going to go shoot the elephant; Second Partner says “You can’t do that! That elephant’s half mine!” to which Angry Partner says “I’m only gonna shoot my half”, at which point presumably Second Partner buys him out.
I had the pleasure of speaking with a gentleman in Arkansas on Friday. I was not really thinking of where I had called until we talked a bit and my brain suddenly realized that he had an accent. I had forgotten how charming Arkansans can sound, he reminded me of my buddy Steve in Little Rock.
That one was common in my north Georgia childhood, too. “I’ll swan” or “I’ll swanee.” There is a long cultural connection between north Georgia and Arkansas, dating at least back to the establishment of a community of early Cherokee migrants in Arkansas prior to the Trail of Tears.
Incidentally, my ancient grandmother (born 1881) called swearing substitutes “by-words” and she held no truck with them. She was constantly scolding us kids for using even the mildest “by-words” like “dang” and “gol-durned” and “golly dog” and “dadburn” and “I’ll be dawg” and even “shoot!”
This was in the 1970s when my “Mamaw” was in her 90s and still sharp as nails (and dead-sure that all her grandchildren were going to hell if she didn’t keep them on the straight and narrow).
My brother and I were under similar scrutiny as little kids. Forbidden to us were such things as “gollee” for which we invented the acceptable “aahlee.” “Durn” was as close as we could get to “dang” or “darn.” (So you can imagine how I still giggle when I see or hear Bruce Dern’s name.)
Needless to say, once we had the opportunity to speak our minds, away from parents and older relatives, we overcompensated by having the filthiest mouths around. We still try to outdo each other’s cussing whenever we can.
The funniest instance of this type of “by-words” (a new name for it as far as I can attest) was a buddy who chose to moderate “goddamn” to “goddang.” I laughed in his face the first time I heard him say that.
I thought of another one I used to hear from my parents and Southern relatives. They would say “kindly” for “kind of”, as in “It’s kindly hot out today” or “That’s kindly true and kindly not”.
I’m not sure if this is limited to the South or not but I don’t recall hearing any one elsewhere referring to someone as being ornery.
More to spark other people’s memories than anything else, but how many expressions and catchphrases can you think of that involve some magic number like three or forty or 100 or something else that always tends to show up as a point of emphasis?
“It’s raining like forty hells.”
“She’s uglier than forty miles of bad road.”
Whenever I hear one of them, I just wonder to myself, “Why forty?”
Is it the biblical thing like “forty days and forty nights” or “forty days in the wilderness” and other things where forty was then what a bajillion is nowadays?
Fitty-'leven-dozen times (you guess the actual numbers). “I’ve told you fitty-‘leven-dozen times to go weed them cucumbers. Now git your triflin’ ass up.”
Sort of about numbers: as kids we’d say something was “harder than Japanese arithmetic,” if it was very difficult. (Also used to refer to adolescent tumescence.)
Not unique to him, actually. My grandmother said “I’ll be dipped.” Actually, it was a long, drawn out, “Well, I’ll be dipped.” with I’ll being the drawn out word. I catch myself saying that on occasion. Bullfeathers (or horsefeathers) I’d always heard of, but never met anyone who actually used it. It was more of a “these are all words people try to sneak by, don’t do it:” and the list was usually “Hockey sticks, bullfeathers, bull puckey, fiddlesticks” and a few more I can’t think of now. Hockey sticks and fiddlesticks I was always told because they were a way of saying “Hell” without saying it, since people would spell it H-E-double Hockey Sticks/Fiddle Sticks.
It seems to be a matter of selective splicing in the multi-quote posts. It’s not hard to “fix” the quotes to suit the point you’re wanting to make. See Post # 192 for what may be the original source of the “misquote.”
I ran into that problem myself over on Giraffe. If you are clipping out one of the quotes of a quote-within-a-quote, it’s easy to get the wrong person quoted.
As for “I’ll be dipped”, I use the whole expression " Well, I’ll be dipped in a bucket of shit". Which is long and drawn out.
