send to Coventry
verb

- to deliberately ignore someone and refuse to speak to them

- to ostracise a person, treating them as if they are not there

- to punish someone by cutting them off from all social contact

- ⁠to freeze someone out of a group as a collective act of disapproval

Cambridge Dictionary, Collins English Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, Wiktionary

—
WORD ORIGIN

The phrase is geographically literal but historically slippery, and lexicographers cheerfully admit the origin is "a matter of conjecture."

The first figurative use is recorded in 1765, in the club book of the Tarporley Hunt in Cheshire: a Mr John Barry, having sent the foxhounds to the wrong place, "was sent to Coventry, but return'd upon giving six bottles of Claret to the Hunt."

The most cited story, though, reaches back to the English Civil War of the 1640s. Coventry was a fierce Parliamentarian stronghold, and captured Royalist soldiers dispatched there met a wall of local silence. Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon, uses the phrase as early as 1647 in his History of the Rebellion, but purely in the physical sense of imprisonment, not the figurative one. That century-long gap between the literal and idiomatic senses is exactly why careful dictionaries still label the origin "unknown."

A rival theory holds that soldiers billeted in Coventry were so disliked that any local seen talking to one was shunned, so the garrison was frozen out. Folk-etymologists have also tried to twist Coventry into "quarantine" or "convent" — charming, but unsupported.

—
THE SILENT WEAPON

Few things sting as deeply as total silence. Long before the phrase "sent to Coventry" existed, people understood that erasing someone from a group was one of the cruelest punishments available. Being ignored, left out or treated as though someone simply don’t exist can hurt more than an argument. 

The idea goes back much further than the phrase. In ancient Athens, citizens could vote to banish someone for ten years by writing a name on a broken piece of pottery, an ostrakon. No crime had to be proved. Sometimes, simply being excluded was punishment enough.

The good news is that silence only has power while it remains unnamed. When something is difficult to say, speaking up is invariably better than shutting down. Hard conversations aren't easy, but they honour the other person. Facing conflict directly is always kinder than pretending someone has ceased to exist.

Helga & Paul Smith

—
SYNONYMS

blackball, blank, boycott, cold-shoulder, cut dead, exclude, freeze out, ghost, give the silent treatment, ignore, ostracise, SEND TO COVENTRY, shun, snub, spurn

—
SMUGGLE OWAD into a conversation today, say something like:

"Ever since he took credit for her idea in the meeting, the whole team has quietly SENT him TO COVENTRY."

____________________
PLEASE SUPPORT US

On evenings and weekends, I research and write your daily OWAD newsletter together with Helga (my lovely wife and business partner) and our insightful daughter Jennifer. It remains FREE, AD-FREE, and ALIVE thanks to voluntary donations from appreciative readers.

If you aren't already, please consider supporting us — even a small donation, equivalent to just 1-cup-of-coffee a month, would help us in covering expenses for mailing, site-hosting, maintenance, and service.

Just head over to DonorBox:
https://donorbox.org/owad-q4-2023-5

or

Bank transfer:
Paul Smith
IBAN: DE75 7316 0000 0002 5477 40

Important: please state as 'Verwendungszweck': "OWAD donation" and the email address used to subscribe to OWAD.

Thanks so much,

Paul Smith
(OWAD Founder)