poison-pen

adjective

poi·​son-pen ˈpȯi-zᵊn-ˈpen 

: written with malice and spite and usually anonymously

a poison-pen letter

Examples of poison-pen in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

There were plenty of poison-pen letters and plenty of murders, but there was not much mystery and there was very little pain. —Yiyun Li, New Yorker, 15 June 2025

This one rewards not the production or performance but specifically the poison-pen songwriting that ethered Drake. —August Brown, Los Angeles Times, 3 Feb. 2025

While Third Point is known by many for its poison-pen letters, that was the Third Point of 15 years ago. —Kenneth Squire, CNBC, 1 Feb. 2025

Spector’s hilarious poison-pen satire of educational wokeism has led us to that point with great care. —Jesse Green, New York Times, 17 Dec. 2024

Each story came out in recent days before reports surfaced that his own mother sent him a poison-pen email accusing him of being a serial abuser of women and something of a cad. —Philip Elliott, TIME, 4 Dec. 2024

The story of this poison-pen scandal is, in part, about the decline of a historical British way of life and social structure that had been tied up with the country’s sense of self as an imperial power. —Nicholas Quah, Vulture, 29 Mar. 2024

Would anyone care enough about a poison-pen letter to perform a DNA test? —Lucy Sante, The New Yorker, 11 Nov. 2023

Sharrock sees parallels in the film’s theme with today’s social media trolling replacing poison-pen letters. —Naman Ramachandran, Variety, 8 Sep. 2023

Word History

First Known Use

1911, in the meaning defined above