Browse phrases beginning with: [A][B][C][D][E][F][G][H][I][J][K][L][M][N][O][P][Q][R][S][T][U,V][W][X,Y,Z] Your money or your lifeMeaning The choice that was given to the victims of highwaymen and other robbers. Origin 'Give me your money or I will kill you' doesn't leave the victim with much of a choice, but this was the traditional greeting given by highwaymen - the robbers who preyed on travellers in English stagecoaches in 18th and 19th century. Whether that tradition is one of historical record or merely one of literary imagination isn't clear. There's a lack of printed reference to the phrase during the time that highwaymen were most active. That may be expected of such a colloquial expression, but the lack a documentary link to an actual highway robbery renders the phrase's origin as somewhat doubtful. It was known, at least in the USA by 1835, when it appeared in a copy of the Pennsylvania newspaper The Adams Sentinel:
See also: stand and deliver. See also: an offer you can't refuse. |