take the Chiltern Hundreds
English
[edit]Verb
[edit]take the Chiltern Hundreds (third-person singular simple present takes the Chiltern Hundreds, present participle taking the Chiltern Hundreds, simple past took the Chiltern Hundreds, past participle taken the Chiltern Hundreds)
- (UK, politics) To vacate one's seat in the House of Commons (since resignation is not permitted), under the legal fiction of being appointed to an "office of profit under the Crown": the ancient office of Crown Steward for the Chiltern Hundreds, in modern times a mere sinecure.