bleeding deacon
n.— «Even in aftercare or AA, if this quality of rigidity continues, it can reach a point where patients are no longer viewed by their peers in recovery as a zealot for the program but as “bleeding deacons” who insist loudly that “my way is the only way to make the program.”» —by Vernon E. Johnson I’ll Quit Tomorrow: A Practical Guide to Alcoholism Treatment , 1990. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Understanding the varieties of conversational styles can mean the difference between feeling you’re understood and being insulted. “High-involvement” speakers interrupt or talk along with someone else to signal their enthusiasm...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...