Aunt Sally

Proper noun

Aunt Sally

1. A traditional game in which balls are thrown to break the pipe in the mouth of a wooden figurine resembling an old woman.
   • There were some swings, and a hooting-tooting blaring merry-go-round, and a shooting-gallery and Aunt Sallies.1905 [1902], Edith Nesbit, chapter VIII, in Five Children and It, New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, page 220
   • Mrs. Morel did not like the wakes. There were two sets of horses, one going by steam, one pulled round by a pony; three organs were grinding, and there came odd cracks of pistol-shots, fearful screeching of the cocoanut man's rattle, shouts of the Aunt Sally man, screeches from the peep-show lady.1913, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter I, in Sons and Lovers, London: Duckworth & Co. […], →OCLC
2. (UK, figuratively) A figure drawing criticism or ridicule, especially when prejudiced or unwarranted.
   • But the novel is something more than a national institution; it has become the recognized channel of communication between the crank and his victims; it is the shooting gallery through which we fire our messages at that dear old Aunt Sally, the British Public.1912 November 24, W. B. Maxwell, “The Future of the Novel”, in The New York Times, →ISSN
   • He is helpless, an Aunt Sally, a figure from a cartoon, a missionary in cassock and topi waiting with clasped hands and upcast eyes while the savages jaw away in their own lingo preparatory to plunging him into their boiling cauldron.1999, J. M. Coetzee, Disgrace, Vintage, page 95
   1. (UK, figuratively) an object set up to invite such criticism