Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. A child who appears on a poster as a member of a group benefitted by a charitable organization: a poster child for muscular distrophy.
- n. A person who is a prominent example or type of something: "He was a living poster child for the evil potential of inherited wealth” ( Jim Harrison).
Wiktionary
- n. idiomatic One who is a prototypical or quintessential example of something.
WordNet 3.0
- n. a child afflicted by some disease or deformity whose picture is used on posters to raise money for charitable purposes
Examples
“In Las Vegas, the poster child of the Sun Belt's real-estate bust, the foreclosure rate was 12%, more than 80% of homes are worth less than their mortgages and values are down more than 50% from their peak.”
The Wall Street Journal: How to Tell if Your Housing Market Has Hit Bottom
“This one seems more about the protest as Dylan was becoming the poster child for the folk-movement.”
“Sophistication, with an elegant beauty, is how I would describe the poster child for aristocrats in the Michigan area.”
“Dow, evil-corporation poster child of the 1960s, produced the napalm used against soldiers, civilians, and landscape in Vietnam.”
“Having become a poster child for today’s overweight and diseased norm at an early age—and gotten out alive and transformed—I wanted to share an abbreviated tour of my detour-filled journey to my own perfect way to eat.”
“The dancers looked barely old enough to be out of high school, and Officer Marten, twenty-two and just out of the academy, looked like a poster child for Teen magazine.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘poster child’.
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NTDW1
template, modal, sublingual, tandem, polycentric, septuagenarian, token, irrevocable, denotive, augural, aberrant, phlebotomy and 1188 more...
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Euphemisms
Mostly awful and political.
information campaign, enemy combatant, person of interest, collateral damage, friendly fire, detention centre, children overboard, asylum seeker, health care, national interest, economic management, redeployment and 114 more...
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Idioms or Phrases or "expressions"
like nobody's bui..., soap up, plug away, country club, horse whisperer, cease and desist, eye of the beholder, small-claims court, nut job, heebie-jeebies, hole in the wall, black-tie and 101 more...
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Going Postal
Words that contain the letters "post" in that order, etymology not important.
post, postal, riposte, post up, imposter, posterity, posterior, postpartum, postnasal, dumb as a post, posthole, posthole digger and 37 more...
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March 2013
A list of words I encountered in March 2013
egregious, vet, heap, poster child, spearhead, litany, agnostic, upping the ante, antithetical
Tweets
Looking for tweets for poster child.
skipvia This should be sionnach's post... Dec 21, 2007