the.com/handcuffs
freedom's off switch, jingling on a cop's belt like a metallic threat.
means A pair of linked metal rings that lock around a person's wrists to restrain them, most often used by police.
from A plain compound of Old English hand and cuff, where 'cuff' once meant a glove or mitten — the part that covers the wrist. Over time 'cuff' came to mean the band at the end of a sleeve, and 'handcuff' fused the literal sense: a thing clapped around the hand's wrist. The earlier word for the same device was 'handcops' or simply 'cops,' from a sense of 'fetter' — and some trace the slang 'cop' for police along that same restraining line, though that connection is debated.
- ancient design
- Romans used iron versions over two thousand years ago
- escape trick
- Houdini built a career slipping out of them
- one size
- most modern cuffs adjust to fit any wrist
- double lock
- a second mechanism stops them tightening accidentally
- key standard
- most US cuffs share one universal key design
houdini's escape acts — harry houdini famously escaped from handcuffs in performances from 1891-1926
handcuff escape challenge — david blaine performed a suspended handcuff escape over the thames river in london in 2012