death by a thousand paper cuts
n.— «“My basic position on this is that the more forward-leaning arguments should also be made,” Spindelman said. “This does not mean that they have to be the only ones that are made. Lawyers can argue “in the alternative.” It is possible to challenge the marriage amendment both at the retail and the wholesale level.” “Lambda has exclusively pursued a retail approach to this,” he added. “In popular parlance, death by a thousand paper cuts. There’s no good reason, from what I can tell, why.”» —“Experts disagree on how to combat Ohio’s ban amendment” by Eric Resnick in Columbus Gay People’s Chronicle (Cleveland, Ohio) Dec. 22, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Chase from Jacksonville, Florida, grew up in Sacramento, California, where kids played Rochambeau instead of rock, paper, scissors. Why the difference in names? Nobody knows. Folklorists call this a choosing game, and while the hand-game itself...
Matt from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was puzzled when colleagues kept saying someone had stood up at a wedding, indicating that they’d been a member of the wedding party. The expression stood up in that sense is an Americanism going back about two...