Take a bung

Posted by David FG July 24, 2011 at 15:04In reply to Take a bung posted by ikinengland on July 24, 2011 at 13:49:

Where does the phrase take a bung come from? Is it from Elizabethan times where a coded message was place in the bung of a barrel?

If you mean in the sense of a bribe, sadly it seems to be one of those words that fall into the 'origin unknown' class.

Though one might speculate that it might be allied to the sense of bung meaning 'throw'.

DFG