cottonpickin'

Cottonpickin' is most commonly perceived as a Southern regionalism and an older informal expression in American English. However, because there is no clear sense-related reason to invoke the picking of cotton, and because the expression is used as a negative modifier, many people assume it is a reference to slavery or sharecropping. Knowing that this term can evoke a racial connotation associated with chattel slavery, some speakers actively avoid or replace cottonpickin' with a similar euphemism like doggone, and it has become far less frequent since its peak usage in the 1960s.