dago dazzler

English

Noun

dago dazzler (plural dago dazzlers)

1. (slang, offensive, ethnic slur) An impressive-looking document used to identify the bearer as being affiliated with some official institution, typically a university or college, with the purpose of impressing low-level bureaucrats, usually of a foreign nation.
   • 1917, Walter Alleyne Ireland, Beating 'em to it: Or, The Sultan and the Sausages:

     There's places where a dago-dazzler doesn't cut much ice, but it was dollars to doughnuts that the Sultan'd have a kindly feeling for it when I had Mungo explain that it was from the President of the U. S. A., telling him to treat his Uncle Phineas good and white, and he'd do the same by him some day.

   • 2017, George Caspar Homans, Coming to My Senses: The Autobiography of a Sociologist, page 170:

     I also took off well supplied with letters of introduction to medieval scholars and with what were then called "dago dazzlers,” formal letters to which the Harvard seal was affixed, […]