Send to Coventry
Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Template:Use British English Template:Sister project "Send to Coventry" is an idiom used in England meaning to deliberately ostracise someone. Typically, this is done by not talking to them, avoiding their company, and acting as if they no longer exist. Coventry is a historical cathedral city in the West Midlands county.
Origin
The origins of this phrase are unknown, although it is quite probable that events in Coventry in the English Civil War in the 1640s play a part. One hypothesis as to its origin is based upon The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. In this work, Clarendon recalls how Royalist troops that were captured in Birmingham were taken as prisoners to Coventry, which was a Parliamentarian stronghold. These troops were often not received warmly by the locals.[1]
A book entitled Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (1735) states that Charles II passed an act "whereby any person with malice aforethought by lying in wait unlawfully cutting out or disabling the tongue, putting out an eye, slitting the nose or cutting off the nose or lip of any subject of His Majesty ... shall suffer death." This was called the Coventry Act, after Sir John Coventry MP, who had "had his nose slit to the bone" by attackers.[2]
An early example of the idiom is from the Club book of the Tarporley Hunt (1765):[3]
By 1811, the meaning of the term was defined in Grose's The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
According to William Clark in Tales of the Wars (1836), the phrase originates from a story about a regiment that was stationed in the city of Coventry but was ill-received and denied services.[4]
Similar non-English idioms
A partial French equivalent is Template:Langx (removing or demoting someone from a high position), which is derived from Limoges, the city in central France to which generals deemed incompetent were sent during World War I.[5] A related Polish phrase is Template:Langx, which is a veiled way to tell the other person to stop all contact. It probably comes from the incompetence of the local post office during the 19th century.[6]
See also
- Boycott
- Coventry (short story) by Robert A. Heinlein
- Ghosting (behavior)
- Ostracism
- Silent treatment
- Stealth banning
References
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