whitemail
English
Etymology
white + mail, by analogy with blackmail.
Noun
whitemail (uncountable)
- (business) A tactic to resist hostile takeover, in which the target company sells discounted stock to a friendly third party.
- Persuasion based on positive rather than negative effects.
- 2000, Gore Vidal, The Golden Age[2], →ISBN, page 432:
- Certainly FDR was a master of his own kind of whitemail and practiced it on the likes of Harry Hopkins.
Related terms
- see blackmail
See also
Verb
whitemail (third-person singular simple present whitemails, present participle whitemailing, simple past and past participle whitemailed)
- To persuade.
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- 2000, Gore Vidal, The Golden Age[3], →ISBN, page 432:
- The ability to whitemail an emotional older man like my father into falling in love with him so that he would help him rise.
- (ironic) Of a white person: to carry out blackmail.
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