<Tr> <Td> </Td> <Td> Look up send to Coventry in Wiktionary, the free dictionary . </Td> </Tr> <P> To send someone to Coventry is an English idiom meaning to deliberately ostracise someone . Typically, this is done by not talking to them, avoiding their company, and generally pretending that they no longer exist . Victims are treated as though they are completely invisible and inaudible . The Coventry referred to in the phrase is a cathedral city in the West Midlands . </P> <P> The origins of this phrase are unknown, although it is quite probable that events in Coventry in the English Civil War in the 1640s play a part . One hypothesis as to its origin is based upon The History of the Rebellion and Civil Wars in England, by Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon . In this work, Clarendon recounts how Royalist troops that were captured in Birmingham were taken as prisoners to Coventry, which was a Parliamentarian stronghold . These troops were often not received warmly by the locals . </P> <P> A book entitled Lives of the Most Remarkable Criminals (1735) states that Charles II passed an act "whereby any person with malice aforethought by lying in wait unlawfully cutting out or disabling the tongue, putting out an eye, slitting the nose or cutting off the nose or lip of any subject of His Majesty...shall suffer death ." This was called the Coventry Act, after Sir John Coventry MP, who had "had his nose slit to the bone" by attackers . </P>

Where does the saying sent to coventry come from