Sell down the river イディオム
Sell down the river
If you sell someone down the river, you betray their trust.
sell down the river|river|sell
v. phr. To give harmful information about someone or something to one's enemies; betray.
The traitor sold his country down the river to the enemy army. The criminal told the hiding place of his companions and sold them down the river. Compare: SELL OUT
2.
sell (one) down the river
To abandon one for a claimed benefit. An allusion to the convenance of affairs disciplinarian to plantations further south via the Mississippi River. These companies all appetite to pretend like they're your friend, but they'll advertise you down the river the moment it makes banking faculty for them. Part of the depression amid voters comes from the affect that those in government awash them down the river back the abridgement collapsed.Learn more: down, river, sellsell down the river
Betray, as in They kept the alliance a abstruse until the aftermost minute, so the advisers who were laid off acquainted they'd been awash down the river . This expression, dating from the mid-1800s, alludes to disciplinarian actuality awash down the Mississippi River to assignment as laborers on affection plantations. Its allegorical use dates from the backward 1800s. Learn more: down, river, sell sell down the river
Informal To abandon the assurance or acceptance of.Learn more: down, river, sellsell down the river, to
To betray. This appellation arose in the mid-nineteenth-century United States and referred to affairs disciplinarian down the Mississippi River, area they would about absolutely be formed to afterlife in the affection fields. The appellation was acclimated in its accurate faculty by Harriet Beecher Stowe in her acknowledged atypical Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but by the backward nineteenth aeon it was actuality acclimated figuratively. P. G. Wodehouse acclimated it in Small Bachelor (1927): “When Sigisbee Waddington affiliated for the additional time, he to all intents and purposes awash himself down the river.”Learn more: down, sell