supporter-in-effect
n.— «In the lengthening hall of mirrors created by the war in Iraq, friends become enemies. Legislators who voted against the war are called supporters-in-effect when they try to support the troops without supporting the war.» —“Senator Mikulski finds herself on the other side of the protests” by C. Fraser Smith Baltimore Sun (Maryland) Mar. 18, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The owner of a Berlin, Maryland, produce stand wants to know: When a customer is buying four ears of corn, should they say I have four corn or I have four ears of corn? Corn is a mass noun that can also be counted as a plural, just as we might say I...