Query: "I've got your number."

[victor steinbok]

Clearly not telephone. Consider this line from a 1844 Punch poem.

http://books.google.com/books?id=40wPAQAAIAAJ
Punch, Vol. 7, 1844, p. 261

The Buss-Driver's Lament Over Bygone Days.

...
When we,--that is, myself and cad,--
Could o'er our pewters slumber ;
But, stop an instant now, 'gad !
The p'liceman 's got your number.


But all this show is that the expression was in use in 1844 London,
not where it came from.

I do have a couple of guesses, but I'll post them later. I hope this
is not a rush question.

VS-)


On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 7:28 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> At 6:14 PM -0500 3/16/10, Gerald Cohen wrote:
>>  A colleague has asked me about the origin of the slang phrase "I've got
>>your number" (= to have precise, useful knowledge of someone's weaknesses;
>>have someone in a critical position).
>>
>>I checked Jonathan Lighter's excellent HDAS and see examples going back to
>>1853, but I don't see an etymology given, so I suppose this silence equates
>>to "Origin unknown."
>>
>>I see various items on the expression in Google but am not clear about their
>>reliability.  Would anyone know what the "number" originally referred to?
>>
>>Gerald Cohen
>>
>
> I always assumed, without any privileged knowledge, that it referred
> to a phone number:  I've got your number, I know where to reach/get
> to you, you can't escape...   Maybe evoking those old movies like
> "Dial M for Murder", in which the bad guy has the good guy/gal's
> (phone) number and can call it at will to raise the latter's fear
> quotient and the audience's tension.  But that's just a guess.
>
> LH

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