send to Coventry放逐

【使用地区】：英国

【释义】：

To ostracize．The historic city of Coventry in England may have been built near and taken its name from Cofa’s tree，in which case the otherwise anonymous Cofa family name is remembered in at least three words or phrases．The most common of these means boycotting a person by refusing to associate or have dealings with him，which is called sending him to Coventry．This phrase is of uncertain origin，arising either because Royalist prisoners were sent to the staunchly Puritan town during the Great Rebellion，or due to the fact that Coventry was at one time so antimilitary that any soldier posted there found himself cut off from all social intercourse，the townspeople even refusing to talk to the troops．The Germans with their devastating bombings laid waste to much of Coventry in World War Ⅱ，destroying seventy thousand homes，all but the great spire of the fourteenth—century Cathedral of St．Michael， and many other historic sites，which led to the term to coventrate—to attempt to bomb a city out of existence．

此短语意为“流放，放逐”。英格兰历史名城考文垂(Coventry)也许靠近Cofa树而建，并因此而得名。在此情况下，原来无名的Cofa家族的名字被人以至少三个词或词组的形式记住。to send to Coventry是其中最普通一个，意思是，通过拒绝与某人联系或发生关系而对之进行联合抵制，其字面意思是“派他去考文垂”。这个词组来源不详，或者因为在大暴乱时期保皇党囚徒被送往坚定的清教徒城镇，或者因为某段时期考文垂非常反战，以至驻扎在那里的士兵感到仿佛与世隔绝，市民甚至拒绝与军人说话。二战时期，德国对该城大肆轰炸，把考文垂的大部分地区夷为平地，七万个家庭遭难，幸免于难的有14世纪圣迈克尖顶大教堂和其他许多历史名胜，从而产生了coventrate这个词，意思是“企图把某座城市轰炸得荡然无存”。