An ancient town in Warwickshire.
1. To send (a person) to Coventry: to exclude him from the society of which he is a member on account of objectionable conduct; to refuse to associate or have intercourse with him. So also to be in Coventry.
[The origin of the phrase has been the subject of numerous ingenious conjectures: see Brewer, Phrase and Fable, etc. A probable suggestion refers it to the circumstances recorded in quot. 1647; a less likely source has been suggested in quot. 1691.
1647. Clarendon, Hist. Reb., VI. § 83. At Bromigham a town so generally wicked that it had risen upon small parties of the king’s, and killed or taken them prisoners and sent them to Coventry [then strongly held for the Parliament].
a. 1691. Baxter, in Reliq. Baxt., I. I. (1696), 44. Thus when I was at Coventry the Religious part of my Neighbours at Kidderminster that would fain have lived quietly at home, were forced … to be gone, and to Coventry they came.]
1765. Club bk. Tarporley Hunt, in Eg. Warburton, Hunting Songs, Introd. (1877), 16. Mr. John Barry having sent the Fox Hounds to a different place to what was ordered … was sent to Coventry, but return’d upon giving six bottles of Claret to the Hunt.
1787. Mad. D’Arblay, Diary, Aug. I sent his dependence and his building to Coventry, by not seeming to hear him.
1792. W. Roberts, Looker-on (1794), I. 34 No. 3. [He] paid thirty shillings and sixpence for contumacy, and swore himselve to Coventry.
1821. Croker, in C. Papers, I. 203 (Farmer). I found MacMahon in a kind of Coventry, and was warned not to continue my acquaintance with him.
1829. Marryat, F. Mildmay, iii. The oldsters … had sent me to the most rigid Coventry.
1885. W. E. Norris, Adrian Vidal, xxxiv. She ended by virtually sending him to Coventry in his own house.
2. slang. A kind of cake (see quot.).
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour, I. 198/2. Among the regular articles of this street-sale are ‘Coventrys,’ or three-cornered puffs with jam inside.
† 3. Coventry Bells. Obs. a. An old name for Campanula Medium. Also called Coventry Rapes, Coventry Marians. It is possible that some British species, as C. Trachelium, C. Rapunculus, were sometimes included under the name: cf. CANTERBURY BELL. b. In Gerarde also for Anemone Pulsatilla.
1578. Lyte, Dodoens, II. xx. 171. Like the Belfloures, or Couentrie Marians … the Couentrie Marians violet. Ibid., II. xxii. 173. Of Marians violet, or Couentrie Belles…. These pleasant floures grow about Couentrie in England. Ibid., 174. We may also cal them Couentrie Rapes.
1597. Gerarde, Herbal, II. lxxiii. § 3. 309. In Cambridgeshire, where they [Passe Flowers] grow, they are named Couentry bels. Ibid., II. cx. § 2. 363. Couentrie bels are called … Mercuries violets, and Couentrie Rapes, and of some, Mariettes.
1657. W. Coles, Adam in Eden, lxi. 117. The Syrian Coventry Bells were found by Ranwolfius, at the foot of Mount Libanus in Syria, in the shadowy Woods.
1776. J. Lee, Introd. Bot. (ed. 3), 329. Coventry-bells, Campanula.
† 4. Coventry blue, Obs. A kind of blue thread manufactured at Coventry, and used for embroidery. (Also simply Coventry.)
[1581. W. Stafford, Exam. Compl., 49 a. I haue heard say that the chiefe trade of Couentry was heretofore in making of blew threde.]
a. 1592. Greene, Jas. IV. (1861), 208. Edge me the sleeves with Coventry blue.
c. 1600. Roxb. Ball., VI. 463. She hath a cloute of mine, wrought with good Coventry.
1621. B. Jonson, Gipsies Metamorph., Wks. (Rtldg.), 625/1. A skein of Coventry blue I had to work Gregory Litchfield a handkerchief.
