as in dead metaphor
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Recent Examples of code word
These traffickers often use code words and emojis to avoid being detected by law enforcement or censored by platform guidelines.
—
Rachel Hale, USA Today, 3 Apr. 2025
Vejar suggests planning your code word in advance for dangerous situations.
—Sherri Gordon, Parents, 31 Mar. 2025
The first half hour is filled with the weirdly neutral techno jargon of soldiers jabbering code words into their headphones to what I (as a know-nothing) am tempted to call Mission Control.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 28 Mar. 2025
Prudent families can also come up with a code word to use in an emergency which a scammer will never know.
—Steve Weisman, Forbes, 14 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for code word
Rachel Hale, USA Today, 3 Apr. 2025
Vejar suggests planning your code word in advance for dangerous situations.
—Sherri Gordon, Parents, 31 Mar. 2025
The first half hour is filled with the weirdly neutral techno jargon of soldiers jabbering code words into their headphones to what I (as a know-nothing) am tempted to call Mission Control.
—Owen Gleiberman, Variety, 28 Mar. 2025
Prudent families can also come up with a code word to use in an emergency which a scammer will never know.
—Steve Weisman, Forbes, 14 Mar. 2025
See All Example Sentences for code word
Recent Examples of Synonyms for code word
Noun
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Many of our emotion terms are references to states of the body—we’re downcast, bent out of shape, head over heels, shaken up, down in the mouth—which have slowly rigidified into dead metaphor.—
Nikhil Krishnan,
The New Yorker,
1 Aug. 2022
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This shift reminds us that dead metaphors aren’t always terminally dead.—
Rob Nixon,
Smithsonian,
23 Mar. 2018
Noun
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The analogy was not lost on the musicians themselves.—
Rolling Stone,
Rolling Stone,
16 June 2025
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So, now to come back to this analogy, in us our soma are different from our germline, right?—
Steven Strogatz,
Quanta Magazine,
12 June 2025
Noun
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What’s the difference between a simile and a metaphor?—
Vibhas Ratanjee,
Forbes.com,
30 May 2025
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No metaphors or similes or hyperbolic language needed here – your kids are next.—
Rob Gagnon,
Hartford Courant,
25 Mar. 2025
Noun
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While much of Carpenter’s music has gestured toward sexuality through euphemism, there’s a more obvious sentiment on display here.—
Fran Hoepfner,
Vulture,
12 June 2025
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That means saying, without euphemism or apology, that antisemitism cloaked as anti-Zionism is still antisemitism.—
Brendan Reilly,
Chicago Tribune,
12 June 2025
Noun
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Elio, which was written by Julia Cho, Mark Hammer, and Mike Jones, begins and ends with audio from Carl Sagan, but its interest in the idea of not being alone in the universe extends only as deep as a metaphor about getting vulnerable with other people.—
Alison Willmore,
Vulture,
17 June 2025
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Wink’s Blue Man Group is an ultramarine metaphor for our rising AI agents: like his iconic, mischievous blue men, AI generates new beings, new collaborators.—
Robert C. Wolcott,
Forbes.com,
17 June 2025
Noun
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Here, instead, she’s swayed by a dead Diana softly squeezing her hand and kindly hinting — the dead Diana is an ace at tactful circumlocution — that now is the time to show a mourning nation some emotion.—
Tom Gliatto,
Peoplemag,
16 Nov. 2023
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By condensing Balzac’s opus to a few paragraphs, Barthelme was having a laugh not just at his predecessor’s genteel circumlocution—his tendency to describe buildings and manufacturing procedures and family trees in lavish detail—but also at the conventions of novelistic mimesis itself.—
Giles Harvey,
The New York Review of Books,
23 Apr. 2020
Cite this Entry
“Code word.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/code%20word. Accessed 27 Jun. 2025.
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