APAD: a good hiding

Meaning:

   A good hiding is a severe thrashing.

 

Background:

 

   A good hiding is one of the phrases that we infer the meaning of without

   really understanding. One can remember at school being threatened with a good

   hiding by the teachers and working out pretty quickly from the context what

   was being said. It never occurred to me to wonder why hiding, which everyone

   knew meant `concealing oneself from view', should be used in a phrase meaning

   a severe thrashing.

 

   We rarely have use for it now but the verb hiding was used in the 18th

   century to mean `flay - remove the hide from'. This wasn't in the sense of

   beating but of removing a hide of an animal during slaughter.

 

   From the early 19th century hiding began to be used to mean thrashing,

   especially thrashing severe enough to remove the victim's skin. It was that

   meaning that Basil Fawlty had in mind when he threatened and later thrashed

   his ailing car.

 

   An early example of the use of hiding to mean thrashing is found in The

   [London] Times, October 1803:

 

     At the bar of the Plough alehouse, when the deceased had challenged the

     prisoner, and threatened to give him a good hiding.

 

   That's the earliest example of `a good hiding' in print that I have found.

 

   In the sporting world, when a contestant is facing a beating with nothing to

   show for it, they are said to be on a hiding to nothing.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]

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My first good hiding was for stealing from the family cache and then losing 10

RMB, a sizeable sum in the 70s, in the dog days of the summer when I turned

five. The Dickensian drama has long become a treasured memory. Aunt and I still

laugh about it today.