I am quoting from The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, "The Stockbroker's Clerk", by Arthur Conan Doyle. Does "a connection" mean "a clinic" or "a business" or something else? I looked it up in 3 online dictionaries but couldn't find anything.
Learn English – the meaning of the word “connection” in: “Shortly after the marriage I had bought a connection in the Paddington district.”
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Related Solutions
The expression is to get in(to) the way of doing something. It is British English and it means
to start to do something regularly
- The women had got into the way of going up on the deck every evening. (Longman)
FreeDictionary also has an entry for the expression, pointing out that you can also get out of the way of doing something:
get into/out of the way of something/of doing something: become used to doing something/lose the habit of doing something
Here is another example from classic British literature:
She ate a little bit, and said anxiously to herself, "which way? which way?" and laid her hand on the top of her head to feel which way it was growing, and was quite surprised to find that she remained the same size: to be sure this is what generally happens when one eats cake, but Alice had got into the way of expecting nothing but out-of-the way things to happen, and it seemed quite dull and stupid for things to go on in the common way. (Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures Under Ground)
ADDITION: Prompted by a helpful comment, I will add that indeed, the phrase get in(to) the habit of is more common nowadays:
The phrase is more common in BrE than in AmE, but it is definitely used on both sides of the Atlantic. The interesting thing, however, is that get into the habit of is preferred in BrE, while get in the habit of is preferred in AmE.
Best Answer
The narrator of a Sherlock Holmes story by Arthur Conan Doyle is Doctor Watson. In those days doctors were private practitioners who had to set themselves up in business (there being no public employment of doctors as in our present UK National Health Service). Watson did this by buying a share (in this case 100%) in the practice (the business) of an older doctor, a Mr Farquhar. This would have been normal at the time, with Watson getting access to the patient list of Fraquhar and thus making a living from them, while Farquhar received money for his old age. The practice was in the Paddington district.
At that time, the way of describing the purchase of part of the business was to say you had bought a connection (to the business). This phraseology has fallen out of use: if you look at the google ngram for "buy a connection" you will find that it was in vogue from about 1890 to 1910.
The story is The Stockbroker's Clerk and it may be found in
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