catch a body
v. phr.— «Bell added in his statement that they had the intention of “catching a body, but it wasn’t. We didn’t go downtown to catch a body, only Arthur did.” The street term, “to catch a body,” refers to knocking someone down with a punch.» —“Victim just random ‘jump’” by Julie Shaw Philadelphia Daily News (Pennsylvania) June 12, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In an article in The Atlantic magazine, humorist Mark Twain quoted a sing-songy bit of doggerel about conductors punching railroad fares that illustrates how colored paper has long been used to encode information. This is part of a complete episode...
Are there words and phrases that you misunderstood for an embarrassingly long time? Maybe you thought that money laundering literally meant washing drug-laced dollar bills, or that AM radio stations only broadcast in the morning? • A moving new...