5 Totally Harmless Phrases (Are Secretly Offensive Jokes)

Your office nemesis, Gary from accounting, went ahead and took all the credit for that big project you worked on together. He sure sold you down the river, didn't he? Yes, truly the worst thing ever associated with that phrase is Gary, with his suspenders and his perfect teeth and his family which actually loves him. The jerk.

But It Came From ...

The river being referred to is either the Mississippi or Ohio, and what are being very literally sold down that river are slaves. Getting sold "down the river" wasn't a pretty fate, even for them. They weren't merely going from one plantation to a different one; chances were they'd be en route to the southern parts of Mississippi, which generally had way worse conditions.

Library of Congress
Which, to be fair, is like choosing between anal warts and gangrene dick, but still.

The earliest known written occurrence of the phrase dates back to 1837 in the Ohio Repository, and the practice of selling slaves down the Mississippi is referenced in Uncle Tom's Cabin. It wasn't until the early 20th Century that people started using "sold down the river" more colloquially. "Hey, you know that awful fucking thing our ancestors did? You know, the thing where they took human beings away from their families and friends and sent them to the shittiest parts of the country to work themselves to death? Let's use that phrase to talk about the time fucking Gary cleaned out the break room fridge and threw away our leftovers without asking. Truly, an atrocity worthy of the term."

The plan had one Achilles' heel, though: A lot of uneducated white folks couldn't pass these tests either. So to get around that, the states came up with the so-called grandfather clauses. If someone had the right to right to vote before African Americans could do so, then they could vote without having to pass an additional test. They also decided that if your descendants could vote, then you still had the right as well, because stacking odds is fun -- like a game of racist Jenga.

Alfred Waud
"Hey, didn't my daddy flog your daddy? Bad news about that Winfield Hancock vote of yours, then."

That giant battle mech you're one day going to weld out of spare ducts and stolen copper wire? That's a total pipe dream, and your Homeowner's Association will never truly know the word "vengeance."

But It Came From ...

Smoking opium.

Opiate-based commerce was important to Victorian England's economy. Women with menstrual problems, or who were prone to "hysteria" or fainting fits, were given laudanum treatments. Children were prescribed opiates so that they might be seen but seldom heard. You could pop down to the corner chemist and pick up some cocaine or arsenic. You could easily visit an opium den with the likes of Lewis Carroll and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, grab a pipe and have yourself some vivid hallucinations. These were referred to as "pipe dreams."

Rischgitz/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
Like the kind that turned Alice In Wonderland from "new math sucks and here's why" into, well, Alice In Wonderland.

Over time, as opium use went from "fun from the whole family" to "emotionally-scarring Requiem For A Dream-style life destruction," the phrase "pipe dreams" went from "that hilarious stuff I see on weekends" to "a thing that will never, ever happen." So perhaps you'd best give in to the HOA demands and stop flying the Jolly Roger from your balcony.

Then there's Milwaukee, Wisconsin:

University Of Virginia

Here's Kansas City, Missouri:

University Of Virginia

And of course, everyone's favorite deadbeat uncle of a town, Detroit, Michigan:

University Of Virginia
Clarence lives north of the tracks, but only because Clarence's parents have a real good marriage.

The "other side of the tracks" wasn't always a metaphorical term for the neighborhood with the best rib joints. It was a conscious act of segregation that the powers that be have both known about and been kind of ashamed of for a while. The Fair Housing Act has been trying eliminate this bullshit since way back in 1968. But the federal government didn't truly double down on it until 2015, when they finally made a concerted effort to integrate the nation's divided cities. So expect the legacy of the racist railroad-based practice to be fully eliminated sometime after we invent the hover car and our kids have to ask what "train tracks" were in the first place.

Jacopo is the author of License To Quill and The Great Abraham Lincoln Pocket Watch Conspiracy, which you must own. Mike Bedard is a comedy writer living in Los Angeles. Make him look more popular than he really is by following him on Twitter. Jamie Wyman is an author, freelance editor, and High Priestess of the Pajama Cult. Follow her chai-soaked profanity on Twitter, read her fiction, and visit her blog at House Pajamazon.

For more word origins you'll wish you didn't know, check out 9 Words You've Used Today With Bizarre Criminal Origins and 8 Racist Words You Use Every Day.

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