the.com/stool pigeon
An informant who sings, named after a decoy bird tied to a stool.
means A person, often a criminal or planted informant, who secretly feeds information to the police or betrays associates from the inside.
from From 19th-century American hunting practice: a live pigeon was tied or pegged to a stool (or stump) to lure other birds within gunshot range. By the early 1800s 'stool pigeon' had already taken flight as slang for a decoy or lure, and by the mid-1800s it had settled into its modern sense — someone used as bait to draw out criminals, or a snitch planted to betray them from within. Some early accounts describe the decoy bird being blinded or fixed to a literal stool, which only sharpened the metaphor of a betrayer set up for others to fall for.
- origin
- hunters once tied pigeons to stools as live decoys
- meaning shift
- decoy became snitch by 1800s American slang
- irony
- the original bird betrayed its own flock unwittingly
- modern use
- now any informant, no actual pigeons required