DisputedNamed from the place
send to Coventry
verb · first attested 18th century
Nobody can prove why Coventry, of all places, became the silent treatment.
To punish someone by collectively refusing to speak to them.
52.4167°N -1.5167°W · Q6225
Record
- Relationship
- Named from the place
- Confidence
- DisputedCompeting explanations remain live.
- Attested
- 18th century
- Part of speech
- verb
Explanations here are written for this atlas. Dictionary text is not copied; the sources are linked so the claim can be checked.
- Step 1
Coventry
- In English
send to Coventry
The favorite explanation has Royalist prisoners taken to parliamentarian Coventry in the 1640s being shunned by the townspeople, an idea drawn from Clarendon's history of the civil war. The phrase itself is recorded only from the 1760s, leaving a gap of more than a century that no evidence fills.
United Kingdom
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