Coney-catching Coney-catching Coney-catching is Elizabethan slang for theft through trickery. It comes from the word "coney" (sometimes spelled "conny"), meaning a rabbit raised for the table and thus tame. A coney-catcher was a thief or con man. It was a practice in medieval and Renaissance England in which devious people on the street would try to con or cheat vulnerable or gullible pedestrians. The term appears in "The Taming of the Shrew" and "The Merry Wives of Windsor" by William Shakespeare, and in the John Florio translation of Montaigne's essay, "Of the Cannibals." The term was first used in print by
Coney Weston from the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Coney Weston Coney Weston is a village and civil parish in Suffolk, England, within the St Edmundsbury district. It is a primarily rural residential town that has dormitory town status. It is north of Ixworth and from Bury St Edmunds Coney Weston has a different meaning to other towns with the name Weston: it is not a true Weston (where the origin is from Old English "west-tun" "western farm, village or estate") but is a hybrid name, from Old Norse "konungr" "king" (cognate with Old English "cyning" "king") and Old English "tun" "farm". The name was