alligator
n.— «Summertime on Interstate 81 can be dangerous. It’s alligator season.…Those “gators” aren’t wayward reptiles searching for a cool mudhole, but trucker lingo for tires or retreads that have flown off trucks and cars and are strewn about the roads.» —“‘Gators’ Lurk On Interstate 81 They Look Like Huge Reptiles And Can ‘Bite’ Just As Hard” by Zeke Barlow Roanoke Times & World News (Va.) July 3, 1999. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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...
In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...