In the article, "Not nein...but TEN reasons why we should love Germany", the following phrase is being used:
LET’S face it, Britain and Germany have a little form over the past century.
Obviously being some kind of typical British humour (I suppose), what does "to have a little form" mean exactly, where does it come from and is it also used in the US?
The relevant entry is 7c; none of the others really fit the context:
7 [mass noun] the state of a sports player or team with regard to their current standard of play:
they are one of the best teams around on current form
- details of previous performances by a racehorse or greyhound:
an interested bystander studying the form- a person’s mood and state of health:
she seemed to be on good form- British informal a criminal record:
they both had form
In OED it’s moved down to 16c:
c. slang. (Without preceding article.) A ‘police record’; a criminal conviction.
In this case it doesn't actually mean “a criminal record”; it means “a history of criminality” or “a history of conflict against each other”.
Police print out a criminal record in a common format so it's easy to locate the information. That is, it has a predictable form (arrangement), like any well-designed form (document with consistent placement of specified information).
Thus, form becomes a synonym for record. To have a form becomes shortened to have form, much as to graduate from a university has been shortened to graduate university (which violates the meaning of graduate, but that deserves a different soapbox).
When a suspect has form, the record establishes a pattern of behavior. Thus, to have form, generalized, becomes a metaphor for having a history of certain actions.
From Death in Paradise, season 7, episode 7, Dark Memories:
DI Mooney: And he has form [a criminal record], right?
DS Cassell: Two charges of theft and one for aggravated assault.
(later)
Officer Hooper: We've got a guy in custody with proven form [pattern of behavior] and he's confessed to the murder.
Britain and Germany have a little form over the past century, then, means that the two countries have a history of interactions following some pattern.
Little qualifies form with an ironic understatement of the degree of the pattern. In other words, the author is saying, Britain and Germany have a considerable pattern of interactions over the past century.
I arrived here because I was looking for the etymology of the phrase "has form". I first encountered it in a John Le Carre spy novel.
I have heard/read somewhere that in that context the phrase meant "they're some sort of trained/experienced spy", i.e. "form" meaning competency.
I also remember reading that it was a British expression, so it would make sense if it was by analogy to an experienced criminal, i.e. it's not a commentary on the fact that the person has a criminal record, so much as that the person is a career criminal, i.e. a "professional criminal" and hence should be approached/investigated with caution and attention to detail.
