Question for all British...?!
Question: why do you call your police officers ...."pigs"?
Answers: why do you call your police officers ...."pigs"?
There's loads of slang words for police officers in Britain, for example bobbies on the beat, more popular in Sourthern parts of england, comes from Sir Robert Peel (Robert is often shortened to bobby in Britain) who started the metropolitan police service which is the service most of us are familiar with.
Calling them the pigs is usually about corrupt police people or when the police are seen as unjust- and no it's not an all American term as some answers have said. It used to be used actually to describe criminals in the 1800's, this use was then inverted during the 1960's, some would say related to class wars and power struggles as illustrated by George Orwells animal farm, to be about the authorities rather than the criminals when many people were treated unfairly by the police.
cos isnt it true?
?
I'm not British, but I think it's just like the terms we have in America.
not sure, but its funny!
"i smell bacon"
Because they go around picking up all the muck off our streets
u must have seen that on a movie we dont call officers pigs
i dont call police men (thats the british term thats wot we call them in Britain) "pigs" y do u? wots the point!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
They call them coppers, don't they?
Last time I checked, British police were called "Bobbies," after Sir Robert Peel. The origin of "cop" came from them, which means "Constable on Patrol". "Pig" as far as I know is American slang.
I dont.
some of us call em "Ol bill" though.
i dont call them pigs
i don`t know why but they have been refered to as pigs for as long as i can remember , i myself don`t call them that .
Pigs are something the chavs would say .
Because we have a generation of plain dumb ignorant teenagers who do not know any better....And they are the first to call the Police when things happen to them...So they are also Hypocrites.....Funny old world really..........lol
That appellation was used by those wacky weeders back in the sixties in the US.
cops but the tem 'pig' is thrown around a lot by the 'chavs'
We don't - only Americans do.
We call them :
Coppers
Rozzers
Bobbies
Polis (in Scotland)
Woodentops (uniform officers)
The Oxford English Dictionary cites an 1811 reference to a "pig" as a Bow Street Runner--the early police force, named after the location of their headquarters, before Sir Robert Peel and the Metropolitan Police Force. Before that, the term "pig" had been used as early as the mid-1500s to refer to a person who is heartily disliked.
The usage was probably confined to the criminal classes until the 1960s, when it was taken up by protestors. False explanations for the term involve the gas masks worn by the riot police in that era, or the pigs in charge of George Orwell's Animal Farm.
I've heard it used in the US... it's just like slang like we say Cops and Po Po and Fuzz for the police
I use Cops or Coppers, Bobbies, the Fuzz, Rozzers or the Man with the Badge. I think Pigs is a mostly American term used by people who've seen one too many US cop shows or movies which is becoming more and more popular, but I don't believe it originated on these shores - I could be wrong though.
The main difference being that if you use the term cop or coppers you won't get arrested. Call an officer "pig" to his face, and you'll probably get your collar felt. It's considered the most offensive of all slang terms for policemen, but as to where and when it originated, I don't know.
I've never heard that word used to describe police officers.
I dont use that term at all
boys in blue
Coppers
Rozzers
Bobbies
Polis (in Scotland)
Woodentops
Bizzies(liverpool)
Ol bill