black aspirin
n.— «“Don’t you do that in front of the doctor!” he ordered the unconscious man, and I have little doubt that he would have kicked him hard and often—in short, given him what used to be called in prison warders’ parlance “the black aspirin,” which is to say the prison warder’s boot—if I had turned my back for an instant.» —“The Evils of Ideology” by Theodore Dalrymple FrontPage Mag. Sept. 6, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In 1916, a small-town newspaper in Pennsylvania printed a fanciful item about a local gathering with a guest list that included, among others, Miss Ella Vader, Mr. Ray Zor, and other punny names. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of...
A 1905 letter from Virginia Woolf offers comfort to anyone who lacks confidence in their own work. As a young, would-be writer, Woolf herself expressed doubt about her own abilities. It would be another 23 years before she published her...