Meaning
Someone who switches sides, taking on the enforcement or defence of the very thing they once attacked or evaded. The reformed hacker now catching hackers, the union leader now negotiating for management: the phrase implies insider knowledge of the old offence put to its opposite use. Often admiring of insider expertise, sometimes suspicious of the fixer who joins the board; the reverse form reverses the valence again. Regional use: Chiefly British English.
Origin
The underlying maxim is medieval. Chaucer's Physician's Tale already observes that a reformed stealer of deer 'kan kepe a forest best of any man', and Thomas Fuller came close to the modern form in 1655 with 'the greatest dear-stealers, make the best Parke-keepers'. William Cobbett treated it as an established saying when he used 'an old poacher makes the best gamekeeper' in his Weekly Political Register on 14 February 1807. The exact phrase arrived in December 1851, when The Atlas described pardoned political exiles of the Court of Rome serving the sovereign they had opposed, and it has been a fixture of British public life ever since, applied to everyone from boxing pundits to cabinet ministers. The reverse form, 'gamekeeper turned poacher', describes an enforcer gone over to the other side.
Research Sources
References used to check this entry’s meaning, history, or documented forms.
Variants
- an old poacher makes the best gamekeeper
- gamekeeper turned poacher
- the poacher has turned gamekeeper
Usage Examples
- The new head of online safety was the most notorious ticket-scalper of the previous decade - a poacher turned gamekeeper, and the trade press loved the arc.
- Hiring a poacher turned gamekeeper to audit the reserves worked until the wardens asked how he had once evaded patrols so well.
- The union's fiercest negotiator now sits across the table for management, a textbook poacher turned gamekeeper.