Idiom
permanent shave
Meaning
A throat-slitting.
Meaning adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Examples
“The criminal threatened the guard with a permanent shave.”
“In the dark alley, the thief warned his victim that he would receive a permanent shave if he did not hand over his wallet.”
“The gritty crime novel described how the ruthless assassin ended his target's life with a swift and brutal permanent shave.”
Examples
simple
“The criminal threatened the guard with a permanent shave.”
contextual
“In the dark alley, the thief warned his victim that he would receive a permanent shave if he did not hand over his wallet.”
complex
“The gritty crime novel described how the ruthless assassin ended his target's life with a swift and brutal permanent shave.”
Origin
Attested from the early 1900s, the term is recorded as a pun on the permanent wave, a method of setting hair into curls or waves. The phrase occurred as a euphemism for death by execution or murder, the permanency of the procedure being its primary feature.
Key words
Related idioms
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