unboiled lobster
English edit
Etymology edit
From the red coats they used to wear.
Noun edit
unboiled lobster (plural unboiled lobsters)
- (obsolete, slang) A police officer.
- Synonym: raw lobster
- 1864, William Russell, Autobiography of a London Detective, page 52:
- Unfortunately, the police have got your address. I didn't tell the unboiled lobster that, though born in England, your mother was a French woman — a Saint Aubin.
References edit
- John Camden Hotten (1873) The Slang Dictionary