The British expression send to Coventry means “to ostracize,” and likely derives from the time of the English Civil War, when the town of Coventry served as a holding site for captured Royalist soldiers. By the 18th century, the phrase also came to apply to informal military punishment in which an officer’s peers would be ordered to ignore him for a prescribed time. This is part of a complete episode.
In the 1970s, talk-show host Johnny Carson had a recurring bit where he’d declare, “It was so cold…” to which the audience would respond, “How cold was it?” Carson always offered a goofy response, such as “It was so cold the ice cubes were wearing...
Lindsay in San Diego, California, says some of her younger coworkers use the phrase out of pocket to mean “unavailable,” but she’s also heard it used to mean “acting out of line.” The meaning of this phrase usually involves one of three things...
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