the.com/mugshot
the worst photo of your life, taken on your worst day, by the state.
means A police photograph of an arrested person's face, taken for official records after being booked.
from A compound of two slangy parts. "Mug" has meant "face" since the 18th century — possibly from grotesque drinking mugs molded into ugly faces, so a person's "mug" became their visage. "Shot" simply means a photograph, the same sense in "snapshot." Stitched together as police photography spread in the late 1800s, "mugshot" came to name the booking portrait — your mug, caught.
- first use
- Belgian police photographed prisoners in the 1840s
- the name
- mug was 18th-century slang for face
- height chart
- backdrop lines let anyone estimate stature
- public record
- often released before anyone is convicted
- famous one
- Frank Sinatra's 1938 booking sold as art
al capone 1931 — chicago mobster's iconic mugshot taken at cook county jail
marilyn monroe 1954 — actress arrested in los angeles, glamorous mugshot became famous
mugshot database us marshals — official repository of federal fugitive photographs and records