dago dazzler
noun1
Ethnic, Offensive, Slang, 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.
- 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.1917, Walter Alleyne Ireland, Beating 'em to it: Or, The Sultan and the Sausages:
- 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, […]2017, George Caspar Homans, Coming to My Senses: The Autobiography of a Sociologist, page 170: