Big Smoke
n.— «If you are dubious about whether bankers are people or what, you will find out…if you walk right in and say to the stenographer “where is the Big Smoke around here—I want to see him.”» —“The Low Down from Hickory Grove” by Jo Serra Mountain Democrat and Republican (Placerville, California) Oct. 24, 1946. (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...
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