Query: "I've got your number."

[George Thompson]

By the 1820s, at least, in NYC, hacks were required to carry a clearly readable number, one that would be lit up at night, to help identify the hack, whether in traffic cases -- hit & run, &c. -- or in complaints by riders.  No doubt there was a similar policy in London -- a much larger city.
An irate passenger/driver could threaten "I've got your number, you won't get away with this."

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com>
Date: Tuesday, March 16, 2010 8:05 pm
Subject: Re: Query: "I've got your number."
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU

> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org