Word.ws English Dictionary

poison-pen letters

poison-pen letters is the plural of poison-pen letter.

Meaning of poison-pen letter

Noun

poison-pen letter (plural poison-pen letters)

  1. (idiomatic) A missive which is malicious, insulting, and/or defamatory toward a person, organization, or point of view, especially one which is unsigned.
    • 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...1915 December 18, “Poison Pen Writer Released on Bail”, in New York Times, retrieved 25 Aug 2010, page 7

Questions about poison-pen letters

What is poison-pen letters the plural of?
Poison-pen letters is the plural of poison-pen letter.

Words near poison-pen letters in the dictionary

  1. poison the well
  2. poison-ivy
  3. poison-nut
  4. poison-nuts
  5. poison-pen letter
  6. poison-pen letters
  7. poisonability
  8. poisonable
  9. poisonal
  10. poisonberry
  11. poisoned

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: poison-pen letters (page history and authors); poison-pen letter (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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