Dover test n. a determination of what level of military losses, esp. war dead, will be tolerated by voters. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Dover test n.— «As it stands, congressional support for the Haiti mission is too thin “to pass the Dover test,” said Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), referring to the Dover, Del., Air Force base where the bodies of any U.S. soldiers...
Dover test n.— «Since Vietnam, you may or may not have heard about the “Dover test,” which a military official coined as the threshold for what Americans could take as acceptable losses to the country, to people, and to the...