D-notice

plural D-notices

1. UKhistoricalA 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).

   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.

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

   1 more example

   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.

   1940, H. G. Wells, The New World Order, Alfred A. Knopf, published 1940, page 15