angel
n.— «Nomenclature has changed. In the beginning of the current Marine deployment that began in late March, members of the unit referred to HR (human remains) and KIAs (Killed in Action) as they examined bodies in five work areas and made detailed drawings of the wounds. “Somebody, I don’t know who, said let’s call them “angels,” and it just fit,” Patterson said. “That’s what we’re comfortable with: They’re our angels, going home.”» —“Unit Prepares Fallen Troops for the Journey Home; Marine mortuary unit performs the difficult duty of returning comrades’ remains” by Tony Perry in Taqaddum, Iraq Los Angeles Times May 23, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...