poison pen | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Amanner,means, ortoneof expression had by awrittenwork, characterized byspitefulness,defamation, and/orintimidationdirected toward a person, organization, orpoint of view.1936August 31, “Maine Politics Afield”, inLewiston Evening Journal, USA, retrieved 27 Aug. 2010:Peter Isaacson continued his attack on Hearst and thepoison penof his editors.2003December 17, Marc Santora, “Rowland Vows to Stay On as Governor”, inNew York Times, retrieved 27 Aug. 2010: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 thepoison pen'spower has gone to their head."2004October 21, Matt Wells, “Lynda Lee-Potter, doyenne of columnists, dies”, inguardian.co.uk, retrieved 27 Aug. 2010: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'spoison pen.; (attributive,sometimeshyphenated)Of, pertaining to, or possessing such a manner of expression.1938November 5, “Editorial: Watch Out For The Poison Pen”, inThe Afro-American, retrieved 27 Aug. 2010, page 4:In a fair political fight in which neither side wishes to take unfair advantage of an opponent, last-minutepoison-pencirculars should be banned.1982May 25,Anthony Lewis, “The poisoning of the well”, inSt. Petersburg Times, retrieved 27 Aug. 2010, page10A: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 thepoison-penattack? No one signed it, and no one has taken responsibility.2004August 24, Anthony McCarron, “Baseball in the Bronx playing like New York's greatest theater”, inNew York Daily News, retrieved 27 Aug. 2010:He's been harsh, too, reacting with the swift kick of apoison-penreviewer when he doesn't like what he sees on his stage.

Examples:

EN: Just trying to clean up some of that poison pen stuff of yours.
ES: Sólo trataba de limpiar esa escritura venenosa tuya.
EN: Instead of finding the poison pen, you spy on his victim. How clever!
ES: En lugar de encontrar al culpable, vigila a sus víctimas. ¡qué inteligente!
EN: A poison pen acts on much more mysterious motives that are incomprehensible to the average man, and even more so to the average policeman.
ES: Una pluma envenenada actúa por motivos mucho mas misteriosos que resultan incomprensibles para el hombre medio e incluso más para el policía medio.
EN: No poison pen can print out a thousand messages in capitals without acquiring a derivative handwriting style that becomes second nature.
ES: Nadie puede escribir 1000 mensajes en mayúsculas, sin adquirir un estilo de escritura que se convierte en natural.
EN: If you were in his place, would you pay two seconds' attention to a poison pen letter? .
ES: Si estuvieras en su lugar, ¿le prestarías atención a una carta venenosa?
EN: She won't get away with it. Nor will Addison DeWitt and his poison pen.
ES: No se saldrá con la suya, ni Addison DeWitt con su pluma venenosa.
EN: They stick to peeping. Rapists don't write poison pen letters.
ES: El violador no se pone a escribir a mujeres.
EN: It'd come in quite useful if you ever wanted to send anyone a poison pen letter. Yes.
ES: Supongo que será útil si quieres enviar a alguien... una carta escrita con pluma venenosa.
EN: What good are they? The poison pen!
ES: Dime para qué vale la mano negra.
EN: Leave it to Charles to be the world's first poison pen pal.
ES: Sólo Charles sería el primer enemigo por correspondencia.
EN: But he's had no complaints of poison pen pals.
ES: Pero no recibí quejas de correo anónimos.
EN: We're talking about multi-million pound crimes here, not poison pen pals.
ES: Hablamos de crímenes de millones de libras, no de cartas envenenadas.
EN: Ah! Well, if it isn't the wielder of the poison pen.
ES: Bueno, si no es el portador \ pen ~ veneno.
EN: That's why I said "poison pen"... not... "marshmallow pen."
ES: Es por eso que \ ~ dijo "pluma veneno" ... No. .. "Mushroom pluma."
EN: You tried to stir up feelings against Mary with your poison pen... the anonymous letter.
ES: Intentó poner a Elinor en contra de Mary con su pluma venenosa, con una carta anónima.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).