D-notice

English

Noun

D-notice (plural D-notices); also Notice D

1. (UK, historical) A defence notice; an official request to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects for reasons of national security (replaced in 1993 with the DA-notice).
   • 1940, H. G. Wells, The New World Order, Alfred A. Knopf, published 1940, page 15:

     Newspapers are afraid upon all sorts of minor counts, publishers, with such valiant exceptions as the publishers of this matter, are morbidly discreet; they get Notice D to avoid this or that particular topic; there are obscure boycotts and trade difficulties hindering the wide diffusion of general ideas in countless ways.

   • 1977, John Le Carré, The Honourable Schoolboy, Folio Society, published 2010, page 18:

     His mistake was to select a heavy English Sunday paper which occasionally ran his pieces. The D-Notice forbidding all reference to these events was there ahead of him.

Anagrams

• condite, ctenoid, deontic, ectodin, noticed