“I’ll be John Brown’s slew foot,” a euphemism for “I’ll be damned,” makes reference to the abolitionist riot leader John Brown, who was said to be damned after he was hanged. Slew in this sense means “twisted.” This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “John Brown’s Slew Foot”
Hello, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, hi. My name is Keisha Smith.
Hi.
Where are you calling from, Keisha?
Indianapolis, Indiana.
All right.
Welcome to the show. How can we help?
I had a question. My mother is from down south. She’s 70.
Let’s see. And they had a ton of sayings, which that she had and still uses when I was growing up as a child.
But one of the ones that I’ve heard so many times was instead of cursing, I guess, or saying an expletive, she would say, well, I’ll just be John Brown’s slew foot.
And I’m like, what?
John Brown’s blue foot? Like B-L-U-E?
S-L-E-W, I guess.
Okay.
Oh, slew foot.
Yeah, and so you break a plate, and instead of saying, darn it, oh, John Brown’s new foot.
And I’m like, that’s different.
The slew foot is the key part here, but we can describe them both.
Slew foot is a foot that is kind of twisted or turned to the side or got something wrong with it.
You’ll often hear this in terms of an animal that is born with a misshapen paw or leg or that sort of thing.
And John Brown, you probably remember from your schooling, was an abolitionist, a slavery abolitionist who was hanged for leading a raid.
And he was often, because he was hanged, he was often used as a euphemism for damned.
So you would say, I’ll be John Brown, you’d mean I’ll be damned.
So if you say that I’ll be John Brown’s slew foot, you mean not only will you be hanged and damned, but there’ll be something misshapen about you as well.
Oh, wow. So yeah, there would be compassion.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pretty bad situation, right?
Yes.
Yes.
That’s interesting.
I remember my Aunt Maiso from North Carolina saying, foot, just as an exclamation.
Just without.
Must have been the short version of it.
Maybe so.
Just foot.
I had a friend whose grandfather was also from the South, and she had heard him say, I’ll be John Brown.
And I’m like, oh, okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That’s probably exactly what Grant was talking about.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah.
Okay, that helped a lot.
Awesome.
Well, we appreciate your calling.
All right, well, thank you.
Thank you so much.
Okay, thanks, Keisha.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Bye-bye.
We love those family expressions.
Call us 877-929-9673 or send them to us in email.
That address is words@waywordradio.org.
I’m thinking this is not “John Brown’s slew foot”. I think it’s “John Brown slew-foot”. where “Slewfoot” refers to the devil. It’s just a double curse.