say hello to my little friend

English

Etymology

From a scene in the film Scarface (1983), in which gangster Tony Montana (Al Pacino) brandishes an assault rifle.

Phrase

say hello to my little friend

1. Used to describe a situation involving the display of an object that is menacing or unpleasantly excessive, especially a large firearm.
   • 2015 April 16, Paul Waldman, The Plum Line: Happy Hour Roundup, Washington Post (retrieved 22 June 2021):

     This is the same Lindsey Graham who thinks he needs his AR-15 in case "there was a law-and-order breakdown in my community." You say tomato, I say "Say hello to my little friend."

   • 2016 August 10, Heather Mallick, Opinion: Meet little Spitey and be better than him, The Star (Toronto, Canada) (retrieved 22 June 2021):

     Say hello to my little friend. Hideous, isn’t he? […] He's a replica of a tiny 20 cm. black-lacquered bronze statue in Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. […] Listed under "grotesque animal," and probably 17th century by the engraver Arent van Bolten, he "stands on high legs with an open beak. On the place of the wings sits the spiralling part of a cochlea (snail shell); its genitals are quite prominent."

   • 2017 February 16, DJ jailed for chopping off man's finger with meat cleaver after he posts video of 'barbaric' attack on Snapchat, Telegraph (UK) (retrieved 22 June 2021):

     Halstead then turned the camera on himself, holding the meat cleaver as he said: "Say hello to my little friend."