bed-blocker
n.— «“Bed blockers” are patients who had been given acute care in a Metro hospital bed but no longer need that attention. They should be sent to a chronic care hospital but there are no available beds.» —“‘Bed blockers’ blamed for emergency ward crunch” by Donald Grant Globe and Mail (Toronto, Can.) Feb. 18, 1985. (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...
After hearing our conversation about how dictionaries decide on a preferred pronunciation, and specifically about how to pronounce aioli, Vern from San Diego, California, wrote to say that a friend once made fun of him for pronouncing grimace with a...