dago dazzler

English

Noun

dago dazzler (plural dago dazzlers)

1. (slang, offensive) 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.