blue boys—
1. (coll.) the police:
- Four blue boys held me while a fifth slipped the cuffs on me.
2. (UK hist.) schoolboys of a charity school who wear blue coats (also: bluecoat boys):
- The school whose boys were known as “blue boys,” was dissolved in the nineteenth century.
boys in blue — = blue boys 1:
- How do you manage between clients who call the police “pigs” and your professional peers who regard them as upright boys in blue.