as in dead metaphor
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Recent Examples of code word
The posts are promptly posted and removed with code words and emojis used to market and sell illicit drugs.
—
Nickolaus Hayes, New York Daily News, 16 June 2024
Whereas other sites and apps almost eliminated drug postings after scrutiny by law enforcement, dealers on Craigslist seemingly remained active using code words.
—Kevinisha Walker, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2024
The number started out as a code word used by several stony Marin County high-school students trying to skirt police, parents and teachers.
—Brad Branan, Sacramento Bee, 21 Feb. 2024
Apple—that was the code word the Commander himself had chosen.
—Hazlitt, 24 Jan. 2024
See all Example Sentences for code word 
Nickolaus Hayes, New York Daily News, 16 June 2024
Whereas other sites and apps almost eliminated drug postings after scrutiny by law enforcement, dealers on Craigslist seemingly remained active using code words.
—Kevinisha Walker, Los Angeles Times, 8 June 2024
The number started out as a code word used by several stony Marin County high-school students trying to skirt police, parents and teachers.
—Brad Branan, Sacramento Bee, 21 Feb. 2024
Apple—that was the code word the Commander himself had chosen.
—Hazlitt, 24 Jan. 2024
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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To simplify the analogy, Villa are underperforming at both the start and end of games.Jacob Tanswell, The Athletic, 31 Dec. 2024
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In the special, Sloss shares his father’s analogy that life is a jigsaw puzzle and love is a missing interior piece.Colson Thayer, People.com, 28 Dec. 2024
Noun
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These circumstances conducive to socialization are most obviously available for young people on athletic teams, but the sports simile is easily applicable to young people in marching band, theater productions, student council, volunteer and community settings and the robotics club.Jeff Nelligan, Baltimore Sun, 4 Dec. 2024
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Later, when asked about his evolution as a coach, Harbaugh described himself as open to change and used a mall-entrance simile to make his point.Dylan Hernández, Los Angeles Times, 4 Sep. 2024
Noun
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Tax complexity has become a euphemism for tax evasion for a price ordinary taxpayers cannot afford.Armstrong Williams, Baltimore Sun, 18 Nov. 2024
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What perfectly plausible scenario happens in this movie, and why does its title sound like a euphemism for something very dirty?Laura Bradley, Vulture, 5 Dec. 2024
Noun
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Last Voyage turns the chilling interlude into a slow-moving slasher, neither acknowledging the book’s metaphor of a ship bringing plague nor indulging in the inherent paranoia of its claustrophobic surroundings.Celia Mattison, Vulture, 27 Dec. 2024
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These worlds — where survival, cooperation and competition are key modes of engagement — are becoming metaphors for our complex realities as technology continues to reconstitute the human experience.Anisha Sircar, Forbes, 27 Dec. 2024
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
Thesaurus Entries Near code word
Cite this Entry
“Code word.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/code%20word. Accessed 5 Jan. 2025.
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