Send to Coventry
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Look up send to Coventry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
To send someone to Coventry is a British idiom meaning to ostracise someone, usually by not talking to them. To be sent to Coventry is to be regarded as absent. It is often used by children to bully others, and can be used to punish people who, for example, refuse to join a strike. The Coventry in the phrase is a cathedral city in the West Midlands, England.
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[edit] Origin of the term
The origins of this phrase are not known, 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, Hyde recounts on 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.
A book entitled "Lives of the most remarkable criminals" dated 1735 states that Charles II passed an act (law) "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 the MP Sir John Coventry who had been attacked and "had his nose slit to the bone".[1] Therefore if you committed the crime you were sentenced under the Coventry Act.
The first known citation of the idiomatic meaning[2] is from the Club book of the Tarporley Hunt, 1765:
Mr. John Barry having sent the Fox Hounds to a different place to what was ordered was sent to Coventry, but return'd upon giving six bottles of Claret to the Hunt.
By 1811, the meaning of the term was defined in Grose's The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:
To send one to Coventry; a punishment inflicted by officers of the army on such of their brethren as are testy, or have been guilty of improper behaviour, not worthy the cognizance of a court martial. The person sent to Coventry is considered as absent; no one must speak to or answer any question he asks, except relative to duty, under penalty of being also sent to the same place. On a proper submission, the penitent is recalled, and welcomed by the mess, as just returned from a journey to Coventry.[3]
According to William Clark in Tales of the Wars (1836), the phrase originates from a story about a regiment that was stationed in the town of Coventry, England, but was ill-received and denied services.[4]
[edit] Later use
The phrase was common in industrial disputes in Britain in the mid-twentieth century.[citation needed] Anyone considered unsupportive of strikers was in danger of finding that his workmates refused to acknowledge his existence.
In the 1937 movie, Captains Courageous, just such a sentence (ostracism) is carried out on young Harvey Cheyne, by his boarding school teacher and classmates.
The 1938 film Lord Jeff has orphan Terry O'Mulvaney refusing to inform on fellow orphan (and title character) Geoffrey Braemer despite being sent to Coventry by his peers in the naval military school.[5]
In Enid Blyton's school stories such as Malory Towers, the girls regard being sent to Coventry as the utmost punishment. There are several occasions through the series where this occurs.
Gunsmoke episode twenty-four of season seven (1961) is titled "Coventry" as Dean Beard (played by Joe Maross) is shunned by the residents of Dodge City for murder and cheating several ranchers out of their land.
Robert A. Heinlein as part of his Future History series, used a fictional land called Coventry as a main plot device in his short story Coventry.
vBulletin's global ignore list is known internally as "Tachy Goes to Coventry". A user who has been sent to Coventry can see their posts, but all other users do not.
[edit] References
- ^ Arthur L.Hayward, ed (2002). Key writings on subcultures, 1535–1727 : classics from the underworld. (2nd ed., repr. ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415286800.
- ^ "Coventry" in: Oxford English Dictionary (2nd ed.) (Oxford University Press; 1999)
- ^ "Coventry (Grose 1811 dictionary)". fromoldbooks.org. http://www.fromoldbooks.org/Grose-VulgarTongue/c/coventry.html. Retrieved 2009-09-14.
- ^ Clark, William M. (1836). Tales of the Wars. Volume 1, p. 72.
- ^ Lord Jeff (1938)
