poison pen

Example Sentences

Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.

There’s no murder here, but someone is leaving poison-pen letters, repellent drawings and destructive wreckage around the campus; Harriet, drawn back for an alumni weekend, gets pulled into the mystery.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 15, 2019

The Villemins alerted the police and began recording the calls, whereupon they stopped – and the poison-pen letters started.

From The Guardian • Aug. 28, 2017

Theroux retaliated with "Sir Vidia's Shadow," a poison-pen memoir about their friendship.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 28, 2016

“Le Corbeau” is about a plague of poison-pen letters in a provincial town that has the effect of making the community seem even narrower and more oppressive: it closes in on itself.

From New York Times • Dec. 4, 2011

The poison-pen puzzle, as it came to be known in the department, first bobbed up some six months before Allison tackled it.

From On Secret Service Detective-Mystery Stories Based on Real Cases Solved By Government Agents by Taft, William Nelson