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.

The gamebook offers a variety of multimedia evidence—cartoonish photographs of the main characters, typewritten notes, news clippings, poison-pen letters—and then encourages the would-be detectives to flip back and forth until they reach their conclusion.

From The Wall Street Journal • Nov. 14, 2025

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

They are accustomed to poison-pen letters, furious emails, and insults.

From Los Angeles Times • Jan. 7, 2015

“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 hadn't been exactly easy to solve, and his visit to Washington, though brief, had been sufficiently long for him to absorb some of the nervous excitement which permeated the department.

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