Phrase guide

sell down the river

verb · 1 senses · updated from the 2026-07-25 local source snapshot

Definitions and examples are grouped by meaning. Pronunciation, history, word forms, translations, descendants, synonyms, antonyms, derived terms, and related words appear whenever the source provides them.

Sound

Pronunciation

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1

verb

Meaning 1

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

Definition source: English Wiktionary via Wiktextract

Usage: idiomatic, transitive

No example sentence was provided for this meaning.

Meaning relationships

Synonyms: sell, sell the pass, sell out, assfuck, betray, burn, cop out, cross out, cross up, double-cross, do someone dirty, do the dirty on, false, go back on, knife, let down, play someone false, quisle, renegade, sell down the river, sell down, stab in the back, swike, traitorize, turncoat

Antonyms: none provided

History

Etymology

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.”