Exhibit A

See also: exhibita

English

WOTD – 24 June 2018

Etymology

From the conventional way of labelling the first piece of physical evidence used in a criminal trial.

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ɪɡˈzɪbɪt ˌeɪ̯/, /ɛɡ-/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /iɡˈzibət ˌeɪ̯/

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

• Hyphenation: Ex‧hib‧it A

Noun

Exhibit A (uncountable)

1. (figurative) The foremost example, often with a negative connotation.

   The legislature can’t fight corruption when the politicians are Exhibit A.

   • 2016, Stefan Bachmann, A Drop of Night, New York, N.Y.: Greenwillow Books, →ISBN:

     Exhibit A—I had a boyfriend once. I was fifteen. He was fifteen. He had green eyes and floppy hair and liked Vampire Weekend, and if that doesn't guarantee a life of shared bliss, I don't know what does.

   • 2016, John Simpson, “Marshallers of Words”, in The Word Detective: A Life in Words: From Shenanigan to Selfie, London: Little, Brown and Company, →ISBN; republished as The Word Detective: Searching or the Meaning of It All at the Oxford English Dictionary: A Memoir, New York, N.Y.: Basic Books, 2016, →ISBN, page 51:

     From 1924 onwards my little collection of evidence contained a mixture of literary references. Exhibit A was Evelyn Waugh in Vile Bodies (published in 1930): […]

   • 2017 October 27, Alex McLevy, “Making a Killing: The Brief Life and Bloody Death of the Post-Scream Slasher Revival”, in The A.V. Club‎^[1], archived from the original on 5 March 2018:

     Characters commenting on their own predicament as though they were the armchair jokesters of MST3K is almost never as smart as a film’s creative team thinks it is—something for which Urban Legend serves as Exhibit A.

   • 2023 September 19, Léonie Chao-Fong, quoting António Guterres, “Biden addresses UN and will warn of Russian ‘brutalizing’ Ukraine without consequence; UN chief says ‘world becoming unhinged’”, in The Guardian‎^[2], →ISSN:

     When countries break those pledges, they create a world of insecurity for everyone. Exhibit A: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Translations

the foremost example

Further reading

• Exhibit A (disambiguation) on Wikipedia.Wikipedia