unboiled lobster

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English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From the red coats they used to wear.

Noun[edit]

unboiled lobster (plural unboiled lobsters)

  1. (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