spray and pray
v. phr.— «It’s a strategic buy.…We have not tried to spray and pray. Because we don’t have a large budget, we put our money in the one place where we know we’ll have a large audience.» —“Radio Spot Snags Addy Best of Show” by David Knorr Grand Rapids Business Journal (Michigan) Feb. 29, 1988. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
David from Kalamazoo, Michigan, is a former truck driver who remembers that his fellow users of CB radio tended to sound similar, no matter what part of the country they were from. Is there such a thing as an occupational accent? Many of those truck...
Katie in Kalamazoo, Michigan, wonders about the expression throw the book at, meaning to “try every means possible.” Did it originally involve literally throwing books? It’s just a metaphor in which the book refers to “the...