public service murder
n.— «A Prince William County jury says Justin Michael Wolfe, the 20-year-old drug dealer who hired his high school buddy to assassinate his marijuana distributor, should die for his crime. The judge has not yet ruled. Prosecutors like to call this sort of killing a “public service murder.”» —“Putting Justice To the Test, With Puzzling Results” by Marc Fisher Washington Post Jan. 29, 2002. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...