tar and feather

Idioms and Phrases

Criticize severely, punish, as in The traditionalists often want to tar and feather those who don't conform . This expression alludes to a former brutal punishment in which a person was smeared with tar and covered with feathers, which then stuck. It was first used as a punishment for theft in the English navy, recorded in the Ordinance of Richard I in 1189, and by the mid-1700s had become mob practice. The figurative usage dates from the mid-1800s.

Example Sentences

Other online memes likened IRS employees to Nazi SS officers and suggested taxpayers should stage a “tea party” and tar and feather tax collectors.

From Washington Post

Cuomo’s lawyers argued that “CNN’s calculated efforts to tar and feather him” left him “untouchable in the world of broadcast journalism” and denied him millions in future earnings.

From Washington Post

“Black Lives Matter Street, we’re gonna take it back. All that paint’s coming off that street. Before I get put in my grave, it’s going to get tar and feathered, and then we’re going to tar and feather all our delegates,” the man said.

From Washington Post

They wrote that the $125 million he is seeking represents not just $15 million remaining from his CNN contract but also future “decades of earnings” that they argue he has been deprived of because “CNN’s calculated efforts to tar and feather him” left him “untouchable in the world of broadcast journalism.”

From Washington Post

“And if any … Democrat had come in there with those credentials that he recited and those accomplishments, the person’s nomination would go flying through. … I’m not going to tar and feather him because his boss was an anti-climate change individual.”

From Washington Post