APAD: We know where you live.

Meaning:

A threat of violence.

 

Background:

 

This phrase has been current in the UK since the early 1990s. Of course,

there's more to this than the literal meaning of the words. What's implied is

that the aggressors have the information to locate their victim at home and

intend to seek them out there and attack them.

 

This piece from The Times, June 1992 reported death threats to Dessa Trevisan

their correspondent in Belgrade and included this threat made by 'unidentified

men', outside Belgrade's International Press Centre:

 

  "We know where you live. We will break down your door and come to finish you."

 

In the King James Version of the Bible, Revelations 2:13, there is the line:

 

  'I know thy works, and where thou dwellest'

 

The 'we know where you live' thugs aren't likely to be Biblical scholars

though and that's hardly likely to be the source of the recent phrase.

 

- www.phrases.org.uk

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

The phrase in the following paragraph struck me as idiomatic while I was

reading 'In the Woods' by Tana French,

 

    She says when she answered (the phone) he said, "Are you Devlin's

    daughter?" and she said, "I'm Katy," and he said, "Katy, tell your father

    to back off the bloody motorway, because I know where you live."

 

and I looked it up and there it was!

Hahaha. 吓人：）

跑得了和尚跑不了庙。

haha, better be careful than sorry ;)

It sounds like not an idiom but just a threat to me

Home address is personal and sensitive, for a reason!

It is both.

so R the emailAdd and phone# in modern times.

had received quite a few attempts to break in our Mircosoft account very recently ...

We might want to de-Internet at some point.

学习了，以后多加注意了 ：）谢谢分享。

Biting dogs bark less

I'd like to be able to threat, if only for laughs :-)

In the past, people's phone # and address were listed in

the phone books. Do we still have phone books? I remember they were delivered to our driveway.

Yes. This phrase sounds more effective alone.

I remember those, too, yellow pages and white pages.

Chinese equivalent be: 人肉

Right. Yellow pages and white pages. Now they are all online

I just checked, no phone # or address listed in online white pages. People can still pay to get the information I think. 

The meaning of "人肉" only dawned on me last year :-)

The city I live used to be a safe one, but not any more.

There‘re 34 burglaries in 35 days. They know where we live:)

They know where the rich live，and know when nobody is in.

It feels weird when not used in a threat

Got u. Sorry, sidetracked:) reminded of recent burglaries:)

It loses force.

好，下次说在网上把我惹火了，我就说这一句。