to achieve an objective using entirely disproportionate means, disregarding the sensitivities of the task and often risking collateral damage; synonymous with use a sledgehammer to crack a nut, both phrases evoke the ponderous swing of a brute force tool and the mess left behind by someone whose zeal exceeds his judiciousness1; an inverse variant is death by a thousand paper cuts, which refers to the eventual collapse of an initiative or institution through the cumulative effect of numerous irritating but individually underwhelming blows; were this entry to continue explicating this jargon much further it would risk becoming an example of the very thing being defined
- Like a Lenny, with potentially tragic consequences if you’re the mouse. (This footnote brought to you by middle school English class.) ↩