Where Does the Phrase ‘Hold My Beer’ Come From?

“Weird flex but OK.” “What are those?!” “Girl dinner.” Of the countless memes that flood the internet every day, a select few transcend the keyboard and enter common vernacular. Even before meme culture crystallized, pop culture has given rise to certain phrases that grow legs and take on a life of their own. And without a doubt, one of the most iconic is “hold my beer.”

Most commonly, it’s uttered before attempting something dangerous or reckless, but it can also serve as a setup for one-upping someone or performing a heroic act with relative ease. Whether the stunt is wildly idiotic or impressive, “hold my beer” always carries an air of humor. But where did the phrase come from and when did it become a common expression?

Even though “hold my beer” was likely first said in a pub somewhere hundreds of years ago, many point to a 1959 Warner Brothers cartoon, “Wild & Wolly Hare,” as the first use of the phrase in something similar to its modern form. In the decidedly dated clip, a braggadocious gunslinger hears that “Yosemite Sam swings the fastest gun west of the Pecos” in a saloon, and walks out to challenge him to a duel. But first, he hands his beer to a nearby cowboy, saying, “Here, hold ‘em beer,” before waltzing out — only to be promptly turned into Swiss cheese. Admittedly, “hold ‘em beer” isn’t quite the same as “hold my beer,” but the clip planted a seed that would take root decades later.

Several sources credit comedian Jeff Foxworthy with bringing the phrase into the limelight in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. Around that time, he began performing his now-famous “You Might Be a Redneck If…” routine, with redneck culture becoming a core part of his act and comedic identity. Many of those jokes made it into his 1996 book “No Shirt, No Shoes….No Problem!” On one page, he writes: “What are a Redneck’s famous last words? Simple. ‘Y’all watch this!’”

However, Foxworthy never actually said “hold my beer.” According to The Wall Street Journal, “a few years later, those ‘famous last words’ had morphed in some tellings to ‘Hold my beer and watch this!’” Exactly how that shift happened — or who was responsible — remains unclear. But by then, the phrase had begun popping up everywhere. In 1999, the line made its first appearance in print as a joke in the book “E-humor: An Anthology of Jokes from the End of the Twentieth Century.”

By the mid-aughts, the internet was blossoming (for better and worse), YouTube had entered the picture, and meme culture was starting to take shape. “Hold my beer” was along for the ride. According to the open-source website “Know Your Meme,” the phrase became closely associated with “fail videos” in the late aughts and early 2010s. Reddit and YouTube users would post videos of stunts gone wrong, often titling them with the abbreviation “HMB.”

Since then, the phrase has ebbed and flowed in popularity. A wave of “hold my beer” memes took off on X (formerly Twitter) after the 2016 election, and again in April 2017 during a week of high-profile PR blunders by major corporations.

While it may not be at peak popularity anymore, the phrase has circulated widely enough to become a bona fide staple of both internet culture and everyday language. Hell, the r/holdmybeer subreddit sees new posts almost daily, and tabloids still use the expression to beef up their headlines. Not all phrases — regardless of how clever they are — stand the test of time. But “hold my beer” has clearly struck a generational chord, and odds are it will continue to do so.

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