atta-boy
n.— «“I like doing this sort of thing. I like helping people, and I’ve often said that this is probably one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve ever had because we aren’t paid with money,” said Debra Sauerbier, Red Cross Volunteer. “We always refer to it as our atta-boys.”» —“A Holiday Without Pay” by Shari Small KSBY-TV (San Luis Obispo, California) Sept. 5, 2005. (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...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...