compromising information collected for use in blackmailing, discrediting or manipulating a person, group, etc.—borrowed from Russian (Soviet secret police) ‘kompromat’, from ‘kompro-’ in ‘komprometirujuščij’, meaning ‘compromising’, and ‘mat-’ in ‘material’, meaning ‘material’
1757, as a loan translation of German ‘Eiserne Jungfer’ (German text published in 1740)—1837, as a loan translation of German ‘Eiserne Jungfrau’—an instrument of torture, supposedly used during the Middle Ages, consisting of an upright coffin-shaped box lined with iron spikes, into which the victim is shut
the name of a decree issued in Nazi Germany in December 1941, under which individuals suspected of resistance or other underground activities were arrested and deported suddenly and without trace, frequently during the night—by extension: any situation, event, etc., characterised by mystery, obscurity or secrecy
“half a moment, Kaiser!”—1914 as the caption to a drawing by Bert Thomas, published in the Weekly Dispatch (London) to advertise a tobacco fund for soldiers
UK, 1881—used of something considered tawdry—from the grocers’ former practice of making a free gift with every pound of tea or with any fair-sized order
churchyard—from German ‘Gottesacker’, literally ‘God’s field’—image of the bodies of the dead sown like seeds in order to bear fruit at the time of resurrection
to use a temporary expedient—UK, 1889—origin attributed to Prussian statesman Bismarck in a letter written during the negotiations of the Convention of Gastein (1865)