MovieChat Forums > Banished (2015) Discussion > Grass

Grass

posted 9 years ago by Psilio
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I noticed they used the word 'grass' a lot to describe an informer/snitch in this series. I had to look it up at first since I had never heard the word used in that context before. This is part of the Wikipedia article (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergrass_%28informer%29):

The first known use of "grass" in that context is Arthur Gardner's crime novel Tinker's Kitchen, published in 1932, in which a "grass" is defined as "an informer".[2]

As you can see there it says that the term's first known use in that context was in 1932.

Anyone know if that article is reliable, or did the writers of the show really use a term 150 years before it was actually used?

What we do in life echoes in eternity Russell Crowe as General Maximus in Gladiator (2000)

[–] Jenn25 9 years ago

The writer definitely took artistic licence with the dialogue but "to grass" is a common British slang and could certainly date back further than the 20th century. There are two popular theories about how this came about - one is that it derived from the expression snake in the grass which actually dates all the way back to the Roman writer Virgil. A more likely possibility, since the usage first arose in London, is that it is rhyming slang for to shop or shopper, which have similar meanings (to shop someone is to turn them in to the police).Follow, if you can, the twisted route through rhyming slang - Policemen are often called "coppers" in British slang. That becomes "grasshoppers" in London slang. Someone who turns his pals, or their information over to the police "shops" them to the authorities becoming a "grass shopper", simplified to "a grass". Maybe that's where the word comes from and maybe its origins will remain shrouded in mystery.