highway robbery

Meaning of the phrase:

Origin of the phrase:

The expression alludes to robbing of travelers on public roads, an event that occurred often during the 18th and 19^th centuries. The figurative use of this term begins to appear in print around the mid-1800s, comparing being charged high prices to being robbed on the road.

The Memphis Daily Appeal records such a use on November 27, 1867, regarding a tax placed on cotton:

“It is not ashamed even of that act of highway robbery, the tax on cotton, levied as a penalty in open contempt and defiance of the Constitution, wrung from a starving people and filched by fraud from the earnings of the sable pets and protégés of the Freedmen’s Bureau.”

The expression also makes an early appearance in The Wheeling Daily Intelligencer , April 10, 1869:

“We don’t know a man better fitted by bad qualities and the lack of good ones for that species of highway robbery.”