- Thus the BBC
People often ask me why I don't dare go outside my front door and the answer, if I'm being honest, is that I am terrified of being slammed, a doom that appears to overtake everybody in the carnival of violence beyond my letterbox.
Ministers seem to have it worst, they're always being slammed, but the epidemic of violence and bruising is not confined to the government. Husbands, plans, coporations, Simon Cowell, Iran, Liverpool and sex fiends have all been slammed of late.
I am not equipped for the world. The only thing I have ever slammed transitively is a door. I have slammed things down onto other things, for example a glass onto a table, and I have slammed things into other things, for example a copy of the OED into a journalist's face.
I don't think, though, that I could slam something big like a puppy farm or Keith Vaz, and my brain is too weak even to conceive of slamming a loophole.
So I shall stay inside with my etymological dictionary and my memories and tell you that Grand Slams are to do with the game of bridge and nothing to do with doors. In America, apparently, they slam dunks and there's something else called a poetry slam, which I don't want to know about.
The typical headline form, by the way, is:
SOMEONE/THING SLAMMED OVER SOMETHING (possibly a jibe)
As in:
BNP SLAMMED OVER ANTI-MUSLIM PAC-MAN SPOOF
Enquire no further.
Don't go out there.
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