blat
n.— «Alena Ledeneva, a University College London professor, will discuss how informal contacts and networks—which she dubs “blat”—have influence over society in post-Soviet Russia.» —“World of lectures set on campuses” by Mark Harper News-Journal (Daytona Beach, Florida) Jan. 23, 2006. (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...
A caller who grew up in Wisconsin says his spouse, who’s from Florida, teases him for such things as pronouncing bagel like “BEG-el” and dagger as “DEG-ger.” They’re just products of his isolect, the regional variants from his particular dialect of...