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Glite Dictionary
to send to Coventry

to send to Coventry

9.9
Ignore someone on purpose and not speak to them
  • idiom
  • UK
translation icon : aislar
  • "By 1811, the meaning of the term 'sent to Coventry' was defined in Grose's The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue:

Examples

  • If you break our trust, you might find that your friends will send you to Coventry for a while.

  • Let's hope they don't hear about last night's escapade, or you may find yourself sent to Coventry.

    Fiction book (1990)

  • The person sent to Coventry is considered 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.

    Blog text (29)

  • 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 behavior not worthy of the cognizance of a court martial.

    Blog text (29)

  • After he spilled coffee on his boss, his colleagues decided to send him to Coventry, ignoring him for the rest of the week.

  • She felt lonely after they chose to send her to Coventry for not attending the party.

Synonyms

to cast out
vsto send to Coventry
31 6.2

Force someone to leave a group or place because others reject them

is a deliberate social ignoring used instead of formal expulsion
to excommunicate
vsto send to Coventry
  • Formal
24 9.3

To officially stop someone from being a member of a church as punishment

is an informal social ignoring used as deliberate personal punishment

Antonyms

to include
∞ 1.0

To make a person or thing part of something larger

to accept
793 1.0

To take something someone offers, for example a gift or invitation

How Excluded

to banish
107 6.3
to ostracize
  • US
31 7.7
to send to Coventry
  • UK
9.9
to shun
26 4.6
to ignore
∞ 1.0
cold shoulder
  • Informal
8 4.6

Surface Forms

send to Coventry infinitive
sending to Coventry present participle
sends to Coventry third person singular
sent to Coventry past
sent to Coventry past participle

Morphology

send + to + Coventry

The meaning 'to deliberately ignore or ostracize someone' cannot be deduced from the literal constituents 'send' + 'to' + 'Coventry' because Coventry is a place name with no inherent sense of social punishment to a learner. This is a culture-specific, historical British idiom whose meaning is unpredictable from the parts and therefore would be opaque to a B1 learner who only knows the individual words.

Etymology

Send to Coventry may come from the English Civil War; one popular story says Royalist soldiers sent to the Parliamentarian city of Coventry were treated coldly and people would not speak to them, creating the image of being left out, so the phrase came to mean 'to ignore or ostracize'.