ArchiveSeptember 2007

quinfecta

quinfecta  n.— «If guessing three winners in three races at the horse track is called a trifecta, what do you call Hillary Clinton’s scheduled near-sweep of the Sunday news shows? We count five separate appearances. Would that be a...

whisker

whisker  n.— «For example, to create “whiskers,” or the horizontal lines of discoloration that run across the thighs, Caitac made balloons that inflate and deflate, mimicking legs inside a pair of jeans, so employees can sand the denim by...

nutpicking

nutpicking  n.— «I held a contest to create a name for the moronic practice of trawling through open comment threads in order to find a few wackjobs who can be held up as evidence that liberals are nuts. It’s both lazy and self-refuting...

dirty kitchen

dirty kitchen  n.— «Dirty kitchen (cont.): Actually, that’s the term for a secondary kitchen, often used by Filipinos. As one reader explained to me: “We Filipinos have a small cooking area outside the house where we fry our fish...

tuitioning in

tuitioning in  n.— «Parents cite a variety of factors—from academic to social to geographic—as reasons they pay for their children to attend public schools outside their home districts. The practice, known as “tuitioning in,”...

golden thread

golden thread  n.— «This reluctance to sign up for the army life is being ascribed partly to the merger last year of the six Scottish regiments into one, with the consequent loss of regional identity. This identity is referred to as the...

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