to bishop
Preserved but no longer current.
There are two verbs, "to bishop, ** both from proper names. One is obsolete and meant to murder by drowning: it is from a man of this name who, in 1831, drowned a little boy in Bethnal Green and sold his body to the surgeons for dissection. The other is slang, and means to conceal a horse's age by "faking" his teeth.
Era: ca. 1898 (Victorian)
Sources & notes
Reproduced from Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898 edition, public domain; archive.org, retrieved 2026-07-31; OCR text, minor errors possible). Reflects the scholarship and attitudes of its era.
Common questions
What does “to bishop” mean?
There are two verbs, "to bishop, ** both from proper names. One is obsolete and meant to murder by drowning: it is from a man of this name who, in 1831, drowned a little boy in Bethnal Green and sold his body to the surgeons for dissection. The other is slang, and means to conceal a horse's age by "faking" his teeth.
Is “to bishop” formal or informal?
No register label has been reviewed yet — treat it as neutral and check the usage notes above.