Chanʹcery

The part of the Court occupied by the lawyers.

To get a man’s head into chancery is to get it under your arm, where you can pummel it as long as you like, and he cannot get it free without great difficulty. The allusion is to the long and exhausting nature of a Chancery suit. If a man once gets his head there, the lawyers punish him to their heart’s content.

“When I can perform my mile in eight minutes, or a little less, I feel as if I had old Time’s head in chancery.”—Holmes: Autocrat, chap. vii. p. 191.

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Entry taken from Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, edited by the Rev. E. Cobham Brewer, LL.D. and revised in 1895.