poison-pen letter

Definitions

A missive which is malicious, insulting, and/or defamatory toward a person, organization, or point of view, especially one which is unsigned.

idiomatic

Equivalents

Examples

“Miss⟳ Theresa Samuels . . . is accused by the Post⟳ Office authorities of sending scurrilous letters to young women whose engagements to marry⟳ had been publicly announced. . . . Those who received the poison pen letters were not willing to court the notoriety that would follow⟳ the prosecution of the case.”

“A retired academic was the author of a poison-pen letter campaign that brought 12 years of fear to a North Yorkshire village, a court was told yesterday. Dr James Forster . . . was alleged to have⟳ branded one villager a prostitute and sent the 13-year-old daughter of the parish clerk a copy⟳ of a pornographic magazine.”

CEFR level