African flower
n.— «Their delicate nature makes reuse impossible and leads to their frequent introduction into nature, where experts say they tend to remain without breaking down for somewhere around 1,000 years. The bags are so pervasive in this part of the world that many have taken to calling them “African flowers,” as if they were local varieties of roses or bougainvillea.» —“Flower of Africa: A Curse That’s Blowing in the Wind” by Marc Lacey in Nairobi, Kenya New York Times Apr. 7, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning “performing a monotonous, tedious task.” At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...