Nuremberg defense
n.— «“I was only following orders.” It’s perhaps the most infamous explanation offered by military members accused of crimes, invoked by defendants from Nazi Germany to Abu Ghraib. Now, the so-called Nuremberg defense is surfacing in federal court in Tucson in the cases of cocaine-running troops.» —“ Drug case defense: Just ‘following orders’” by Carol Ann Alaimo Arizona Daily Star (Tucson, Arizona) July 23, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sarah Jane in Tucson, Arizona, recalls hearing the phrase out where God lost his galoshes for any far-flung, hard-to-reach place. Similar phrases include where God left his overshoes, where Jesus lost his sandals, where Jesus lost his cap, where...
A North Carolina listener is fond of the German loanword Weltschmerz, literally “world pain,” a compound word made up of Welt, cognate with English world and Schmerz, cognate with smart as in That smarts! Coined by a 19th-century German author who...