I swannee!
By DAN LANGFORD
I’m not sure how to spell this expression, but I’ve heard women say it all my life. Men use it on occasion, but generally default to “I swear!”, which I suppose in the genteel South seemed a bit harsh for women to say. Both phrases mean the same thing — some combination of amazement or disgust or frustration — as in, “I swannee, I don’t know what I’m gonna do with that boy! I can’t think of enough things to tell him not to do!” Very rarely one would hear, ” I swannee to God,” which would indicate that the phrase’s origin was in an oath of some kind.
A marvelous website (www.word-detective.com) provides a perfectly plausible answer to the very reasonable question of where this odd but often-heard phrase came from. It seems that in old England, folks said “I shall warrant you,” instead of “I swear;” both being said in the more traditional sense of swearing to tell the whole truth. In the north of England, the dialectic pronunciation of the phrase “I shall warrant you” was something like “I s’wan ye,” which goes a long way toward clarifying where this funny old phrase comes from.
I swannee, it’s amazing what one can find on the internet, isn’t it?