The Bill

Last night we were watching TV when we caught a commercial for The Bill. “Why the heck do the English call the police department ‘the bill’ anyway?” I wondered. Snookums didn’t know, so he fired up Google. After several minutes, he found this Word Detective column (second entry from the bottom). Turns out it comes from a comic strip that ran during the First World War. It had a character named “Old Bill” who was a grumpy veteran with a big droopy mustache, and the strip was so popular that “Old Bill” became slang for any man with a walrus-like ‘tache. They’re not quite sure how it then came to be applied to policemen, but the speculation is that coppers are/were likely to sport such facial hair. Interesting, huh?