"poison pen" meaning in All languages combined

See poison pen on Wiktionary

Noun [English]

Audio: En-au-poison pen.ogg [Australia] Forms: poison pens [plural]
Head templates: {{en-noun}} poison pen (plural poison pens)
  1. (idiomatic) A manner, means, or tone of expression had by a written work, characterized by spitefulness, defamation, and/or intimidation directed toward a person, organization, or point of view. Tags: idiomatic
    Sense id: en-poison_pen-en-noun-gIph3~46 Categories (other): English entries with incorrect language header Disambiguation of English entries with incorrect language header: 57 43
  2. (attributive, sometimes hyphenated) Of, pertaining to, or possessing such a manner of expression. Tags: attributive
    Sense id: en-poison_pen-en-noun-zoFwMH8i
The following are not (yet) sense-disambiguated
Derived forms: poison-pen letter

Inflected forms

Download JSON data for poison pen meaning in All languages combined (4.0kB)

{
  "derived": [
    {
      "_dis1": "0 0",
      "word": "poison-pen letter"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "poison pens",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "poison pen (plural poison pens)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "_dis": "57 43",
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w+disamb"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1936 August 31, “Maine Politics Afield”, in Lewiston Evening Journal, USA, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "Peter Isaacson continued his attack on Hearst and the poison pen of his editors.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 December 17, Marc Santora, “Rowland Vows to Stay On as Governor”, in New York Times, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "After Mr. Rowland spoke, his wife, Patricia, delivered a spoof on the poem \"Twas the Night Before Christmas,\" that was a stinging sing-song rebuke of the news organizations that had reported on her husband's shortcomings and the widening federal investigation into his administration. Referring to the news media, she said: \"They used to be good girls and boys, Santa said. But the poison pen's power has gone to their head.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 October 21, Matt Wells, “Lynda Lee-Potter, doyenne of columnists, dies”, in guardian.co.uk, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "The centrepiece of her work was a weekly column that could brim with venom . . . . Cherie Blair, Geri Halliwell, Sarah Ferguson, Victoria Beckham and Princess Diana all found themselves the subjects of Lee-Potter's poison pen.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A manner, means, or tone of expression had by a written work, characterized by spitefulness, defamation, and/or intimidation directed toward a person, organization, or point of view."
      ],
      "id": "en-poison_pen-en-noun-gIph3~46",
      "links": [
        [
          "manner",
          "manner"
        ],
        [
          "means",
          "means"
        ],
        [
          "tone",
          "tone"
        ],
        [
          "written",
          "written"
        ],
        [
          "spitefulness",
          "spitefulness"
        ],
        [
          "defamation",
          "defamation"
        ],
        [
          "intimidation",
          "intimidation"
        ],
        [
          "point of view",
          "point of view"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A manner, means, or tone of expression had by a written work, characterized by spitefulness, defamation, and/or intimidation directed toward a person, organization, or point of view."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1938 November 5, “Editorial: Watch Out For The Poison Pen”, in The Afro-American, retrieved 2010-08-27, page 4",
          "text": "In a fair political fight in which neither side wishes to take unfair advantage of an opponent, last-minute poison-pen circulars should be banned.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1982 May 25, Anthony Lewis, “The poisoning of the well”, in St. Petersburg Times, retrieved 2010-08-27, page 10A",
          "text": "This collection of garbage and guilt-by-association was slipped into the files of the White House personnel office last fall. . . . Who was responsible for the poison-pen attack? No one signed it, and no one has taken responsibility.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 August 24, Anthony McCarron, “Baseball in the Bronx playing like New York's greatest theater”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "He's been harsh, too, reacting with the swift kick of a poison-pen reviewer when he doesn't like what he sees on his stage.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Of, pertaining to, or possessing such a manner of expression."
      ],
      "id": "en-poison_pen-en-noun-zoFwMH8i",
      "links": [
        [
          "hyphenate",
          "hyphenate"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "sometimes hyphenated",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(attributive, sometimes hyphenated) Of, pertaining to, or possessing such a manner of expression."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "attributive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-poison pen.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/27/En-au-poison_pen.ogg/En-au-poison_pen.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/En-au-poison_pen.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "poison pen"
}
{
  "categories": [
    "English countable nouns",
    "English entries with incorrect language header",
    "English lemmas",
    "English multiword terms",
    "English nouns",
    "English terms with audio links"
  ],
  "derived": [
    {
      "word": "poison-pen letter"
    }
  ],
  "forms": [
    {
      "form": "poison pens",
      "tags": [
        "plural"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {},
      "expansion": "poison pen (plural poison pens)",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English idioms",
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1936 August 31, “Maine Politics Afield”, in Lewiston Evening Journal, USA, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "Peter Isaacson continued his attack on Hearst and the poison pen of his editors.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2003 December 17, Marc Santora, “Rowland Vows to Stay On as Governor”, in New York Times, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "After Mr. Rowland spoke, his wife, Patricia, delivered a spoof on the poem \"Twas the Night Before Christmas,\" that was a stinging sing-song rebuke of the news organizations that had reported on her husband's shortcomings and the widening federal investigation into his administration. Referring to the news media, she said: \"They used to be good girls and boys, Santa said. But the poison pen's power has gone to their head.\"",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 October 21, Matt Wells, “Lynda Lee-Potter, doyenne of columnists, dies”, in guardian.co.uk, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "The centrepiece of her work was a weekly column that could brim with venom . . . . Cherie Blair, Geri Halliwell, Sarah Ferguson, Victoria Beckham and Princess Diana all found themselves the subjects of Lee-Potter's poison pen.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "A manner, means, or tone of expression had by a written work, characterized by spitefulness, defamation, and/or intimidation directed toward a person, organization, or point of view."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "manner",
          "manner"
        ],
        [
          "means",
          "means"
        ],
        [
          "tone",
          "tone"
        ],
        [
          "written",
          "written"
        ],
        [
          "spitefulness",
          "spitefulness"
        ],
        [
          "defamation",
          "defamation"
        ],
        [
          "intimidation",
          "intimidation"
        ],
        [
          "point of view",
          "point of view"
        ]
      ],
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(idiomatic) A manner, means, or tone of expression had by a written work, characterized by spitefulness, defamation, and/or intimidation directed toward a person, organization, or point of view."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "idiomatic"
      ]
    },
    {
      "categories": [
        "English terms with quotations"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1938 November 5, “Editorial: Watch Out For The Poison Pen”, in The Afro-American, retrieved 2010-08-27, page 4",
          "text": "In a fair political fight in which neither side wishes to take unfair advantage of an opponent, last-minute poison-pen circulars should be banned.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1982 May 25, Anthony Lewis, “The poisoning of the well”, in St. Petersburg Times, retrieved 2010-08-27, page 10A",
          "text": "This collection of garbage and guilt-by-association was slipped into the files of the White House personnel office last fall. . . . Who was responsible for the poison-pen attack? No one signed it, and no one has taken responsibility.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2004 August 24, Anthony McCarron, “Baseball in the Bronx playing like New York's greatest theater”, in New York Daily News, retrieved 2010-08-27",
          "text": "He's been harsh, too, reacting with the swift kick of a poison-pen reviewer when he doesn't like what he sees on his stage.",
          "type": "quotation"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Of, pertaining to, or possessing such a manner of expression."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "hyphenate",
          "hyphenate"
        ]
      ],
      "qualifier": "sometimes hyphenated",
      "raw_glosses": [
        "(attributive, sometimes hyphenated) Of, pertaining to, or possessing such a manner of expression."
      ],
      "tags": [
        "attributive"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "audio": "En-au-poison pen.ogg",
      "mp3_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/transcoded/2/27/En-au-poison_pen.ogg/En-au-poison_pen.ogg.mp3",
      "ogg_url": "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/En-au-poison_pen.ogg",
      "tags": [
        "Australia"
      ],
      "text": "Audio (AU)"
    }
  ],
  "word": "poison pen"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable All languages combined dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-05-03 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-05-02 using wiktextract (f4fd8c9 and c9440ce). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.