beta
n.— «Stripping his suit to reveal a pair of bright green lycra tights, the Manhattan businessman lifts himself up on to the east face of the rock to demonstrate “the beta”—that’s climbese for the ability to flawlessly excecute a sequence of moves.» —“The Rat Rock Ballet In The Park” by John Hanc Newsday Oct. 16, 1989. (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...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...