Learn English – Where does “hot damn!” come from

american-englishetymologyhistory

There is the exclamation "hot damn", which one might use, in certain contexts, similar to " All right!", or "Excellent!" (American English, as far as I know.)

Google ngrams says it doesn't see it anywhere but it does see "hot dam", which is as often as it is used as an interjection; it also seems to refer naturally to an engineering situation involving dams.

  • Where does it come from? Is there any initial provenance for it, or other languages it was possibly borrowed from?
  • Is hot diggity an euphemism for it?
  • Why hot?

Best Answer

The earliest reference I can find is from Hugh Wiley's first novel Wildcat, 1920:

The Wildcat, consuming a pork chop in the kitchen end of the mess hall, listened in. "Hot damn!" he exclaimed, "Grasty—was big words cooties, Honey Tone sho' would itch! Lissen at him go!"

A bit more about the book (from the Wiley link):

The Wildcat told the story of a black American drafted and sent overseas during World War I; several of Wiley's other early books, including The Prowler and Fo' Meals a Day (1927), were works depicting black life in comic and exaggerated manner, somewhat akin to minstrel show entertainment though perhaps a bit more subtle.

Related Topic