#fall-downs

Food, drink, and the behaviour of commuters - more 19th century #slang

It’s a fair cop is heard even today in dramas that have no pretensions to any literary merit, a phrase mouthed by a felon who has been caught red-handed or bang to rights. The origins of the phrase are not quite what you might have expected. Fair means thorough while cop is an Early English verb meaning to catch. A fake pie, James Ware informs us in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, also…