Q: If someone is charging a price we consider unwarranted, we say that’s “highway robbery.” Is highway robbery worse than ordinary robbery? And why do we say “highway robbery” when we are not on a highway, but standing in a supermarket shocked by the price of strawberries?
A: Today “robbery” (the taking of something by force) is worse than “highway robbery” (charging an exorbitant price for something).
If you feel the price of something is “highway robbery,” you usually don’t have to buy it, but you can’t just brush off an armed robber.
However, the expression “highway robbery” was more intimidating when it first appeared in the early 17th century, a time when armed “highwaymen” on horseback preyed upon travelers. Here’s the colorful history of the phrase.
The oldest of these terms, “highway” first appeared as heiweg in the Kentish dialect of early Old English, and meant a public road regarded as being under royal protection, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.
The earliest OED citation is from a land charter in Latin and Old English, dated around 859, for the sale of property by Ethelmod, an ealdorman or alderman, to a man named Plegred:
“Ab oriente cyniges heiweg. A meritie stret to Scufelingforde” (“From the east, the king’s highway, a street south to Scufelingforde”). From Charters of Christ Church Canterbury, Part 2 (2013), edited by Susan E. Kelly and Nicholas P. Brooks.
The noun “robbery” appeared in Old English writing in the 12th century. The OED’s earliest example, which we’ve expanded here, describes how those who turn away from God are punished:
“Vuele he us briseð. gif he binimeð us ure agte. oðer þurh fur. oðer þurh þiefes. oðer þurh roberie. oðer þurh unrihte dom” (“Wrathfully he crushes us, if he takes away our property, either through fire, either through thieves, either through robbery, either through unjust judgment”).
The first OED example of the phrase “highway robbery” appeared in the early 17th century: “Skulking surprises and vnder-hand stealthes, more neerely resembling high-way robberies, then lawfull battell” (The History of Great Britaine Under the Conquests of Ye Romans, Saxons, Danes and Normans, 1611, by John Speed).
The noun “highwayman” soon showed up in Compters Common-wealth (1617), a play by William Fennor about the inmates of a compter, or debtor’s prison:
“It is this that makes Newmarket heath, and Royston-dounes about Christmas time so full of high-way men that poore Countrie people cannot passe quietly to their Cottages.”
In the late 18th century, English speakers began using “highway robbery” figuratively to mean “blatant and unfair overcharging or swindling; the charging of an exorbitantly high price,” the OED says.
The dictionary’s first citation is from All the World’s a Stage (1777), a farce by the Irish playwright Isaac Jackman: “What, five shillings for a boiled fowl! … This is high-way robbery, without the credit of being robbed.”
The figurative use of a literal expression is common in English, as when you “rock the boat,” “shake a leg,” come to a “dead end,” “put your best foot forward,” or have “a laundry list” of things to do.
Finally, here’s an illustration of a literal highway robbery, done by Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827). The tinted etching (Vicissitudes of the Road in 1787: The Highwayman, Lord Barrymore Stopped) was reproduced in a London weekly, The Graphic, Dec. 6, 1890:
Help support the Grammarphobia Blog with your donation. And check out our books about the English language and more.
