sell down the river

短语

发音

AU

词形变化

selling down the river sells down the river 三单 sells down the river sold down the river selling down the river 现在分词 sold down the river 过去式 sold down the river 过去分词

释义与例句

v.
  1. 1.

    To betray, especially in a manner which causes serious difficulty for the one betrayed.

    习语 及物

词源

Probably from the practice in the U.S., prior to the American Civil War, of trading in slaves who were transported via the Mississippi River: :* Mark Twain (1885), chapter 42, in Huckleberry Finn: “"[H]e ain't no slave. . . . Old Miss Watson died two months ago, and she was ashamed she ever was going to sell him down the river, and said so; and she set him free in her will."” :* Colin Woodard (2011), chapter 18, in American nations: "The least fortunate wound up on the sugar plantations of southern Louisiana and Mississippi, where it was sometimes profitable to work one’s slaves to death. Being “sold down the river” originally referred to slaves being sold by Appalachian people in Kentucky and Tennessee to downriver plantation owners in the Deep South.”

来源：wiktionary