Poison pen letter
Malicious letter, usually anonymous
A poison pen letter (or poisoned pen letter) is a letter or note containing unpleasant, abusive, or malicious statements or accusations about the recipient or a third party. It is usually sent anonymously, often by employing the ransom note effect to avoid exposing the author's handwriting. Poison pen letters are usually composed and sent to upset the recipient, and differ from blackmail, which is intended to obtain something from the recipient. The reference to poison is figurative rather than literal.
In the United Kingdom, Section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 covers most cases of poison pen letters.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Poison pen letter”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Poison pen.jpg by KF (talk) (Uploads), Public domain
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