(n.) A common saying; a proverb; a saying that has a general currency.
(n.) The object of a contemptuous saying.
Example Sentences:
(1) The District became a byword for crime and drug abuse, while its “mayor for life” lived high on the hog and lurched cheerfully from one scandal to the next.
(2) The previous management was a byword for incompetence and the current incumbents are no better.
(3) It will not rest until "statutory" is a byword for "doesn't work".
(4) BitTorrent technology may be forever be a byword for online piracy in many quarters of the creative industries, but BitTorrent the company would rather be seen as a powerful legal tool for digital marketing.
(5) For 15 years, Matthew Shepard’s unspeakably brutal murder on a lonely prairie in Wyoming has been a byword for the very worst of American anti-gay bigotry and a rallying cry for a more tolerant, more inclusive society.
(6) But what they hanker for is a left that treats Israel the way it treats any other country with such a record – as a flawed society, but not one that is a byword for evil, that is deemed a “disease” (as it was by a caller to a 2010 show on Press TV , the Iranian state broadcaster, without objection from the host, Jeremy Corbyn), whose very right to exist is held to be conditional on good behaviour, a standard not applied to any other nation on Earth.
(7) His name is a byword to all students of public health and is familiar to readers of World Health Forum from our fortieth anniversary article about the early days of WHO (1) and the reminiscences of Szeming Sze (2).
(8) The film could be said to mark the moment when the favela – previously a byword for criminality, sickness and moral depravity – started to become “chic”.
(9) Bisexual has almost become a byword for anything goes, and more often than not bisexuals are thought of as attention-seeking.
(10) There again, there are plenty of people who work in this part of the economy and see it as a byword for autonomy.
(11) This is Stokes Croft, the gloriously bohemian corner of Bristol that has become a byword for the fight against the so-called "Big Four": Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrisons – and, of course, Tesco.
(12) The boy from Stepney not only survived but thrived, helping to lead the dramatic renaissance of a local education system that at the time had become a byword for failure but which has now become a beacon for the possibilities of public service reform, boasting some of Britain's highest achieving state secondary schools.
(13) Diepsloot has become a byword for criminal gangs, vigilante mob justice and xenophobic violence.
(14) The Mid Staffs care scandal, named after the NHS trust that runs the hospital, has prompted a series of official inquiries – the biggest of which reports on Wednesday – and has become a byword for the NHS at its very worst.
(15) Yet though the imposing high-rises became a byword for violence, alienation and crime, they will be missed by the many artists, writers and filmmakers who made it the subject of their work.
(16) Kobani was the Kurdish Stalingrad, and its defence became a byword for heroism.
(17) The town’s successful defence became a byword for heroism.
(18) The basic story is simple: people (and companies) fleeing London contribute to double-digit house-price inflation, rents soar and the character of renowned areas of the city – particularly St Paul’s, the byword for Bristol’s black community where Rees spent some of his childhood – is said to be under real threat.
(19) As fans held their breath, the Arrested Development movie became a byword for delayed gratification.
(20) The fact that this great stately edifice was constructed on Orkney, an island that has become a byword for remoteness, makes the site's discovery all the more remarkable.
Watchword
Definition:
(n.) A word given to sentinels, and to such as have occasion to visit the guards, used as a signal by which a friend is known from an enemy, or a person who has a right to pass the watch from one who has not; a countersign; a password.
(n.) A sentiment or motto; esp., one used as a rallying cry or a signal for action.
Example Sentences:
(1) He poses a far greater risk to our security than any other Labour leader in my lifetime September 12, 2015 “Security” appears to be the new watchword of Cameron’s government – it was used six times by the prime minister in an article attacking Corbyn in the Times late last month, and eight times by the chancellor, George Osborne, in an article published in the Sun the following day.
(2) Individualism – the assertion of every person’s claim to maximised private freedom and the unrestrained liberty to express autonomous desires … became the leftwing watchword of the hour.” The result was an astonishing liberation: from millennia of social, gender and sexual control by powerful, mostly elderly men.
(3) That will be the watchword of David Cameron’s Tories next week.
(4) The mantra of "fewer, better" will become a watchword across the BBC's output – as will collaboration with other broadcasters: a reinvented Call The Midwife is relocated to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
(5) Instead of being held captive to words such as "rational suicide" or "euthanasia", what is needed is an acceptance of more contemporary watchwords such as autonomy and self-determination.
(6) The watchwords are suitably commercial: “strategic commissioning”, “market-making”, and “brand protection”.
(7) In private, the watchword remains "Hamburger Hill", the brutal 80s Vietnam war film named because Vietnamese bullets turned human flesh into hamburger meat.
(8) Indeed, "choice and control" have been watchwords espoused by politicians of all hues since the mid-90s.
(9) It would seem unlikely that Germany would countenance any of these measures in any way, and for that reason caution remains the watchword.
(10) Count the number of times you hear the chancellor and prime minister say “security”, their watchword and their excuse for all they mean to do, from brutal spending cuts to purchasing an armoury of foreign military hardware.
(11) Shopping will change beyond recognition, with “ hyper showrooming ” the watchword – shops will become “emotional destinations”, products hidden away behind digital screens, and heavily tailored to individual taste, guided by algorithms and ultimately our own prior behaviour.
(12) Patience, not aggression, has been the watchword of law enforcement ever since.
(13) Ruthlessness has become the network owners' watchword now, because the mobile phone boom they have ridden for nearly 20 years is over.
(14) Caution was the watchword, and both coaches were unapologetic.
(15) Security” is Cameron’s current watchword – “for families, for the country” – but there is no security for families forever on short private leases.
(16) The traditional core service in most places is essential support with personal care for people with long-term health and care needs, where the watchword is continuity of relationships, reliability and dignity.
(17) "Reform" was their watchword and they had one new article of faith: that the best proof of any leader's bona fides was the habit of loudly defining themselves against their own side.
(18) Except for a few tweaks that generally resonate more at home than with Germany's European and international partners (such as requiring the government to be more transparent concerning arms exports to autocratic regimes), continuity and caution will remain the watchwords of German foreign and security policy.
(19) One understanding holds "Benghazi" as a watchword for government malfeasance.
(20) "[We] propose a 'new union for fairness' whose watchwords are power-sharing, diversity and constitutional partnership, replacing the old union of centralisation, uniformity and Westminster's undivided sovereignty."