blessingway
n.— «This afternoon, my sister-in-law, who will be acting as my doula during Truman’s birth, threw me a blessingway. The blessingway (or mother blessing, as it is sometimes known) is a Navajo tradition that has been adapted in recent years to serve the needs of mothers of all cultures, religions and traditions. A blessingway is a way of celebrating the mother, and prepare her for her upcoming birth journey.» —“Blogging a Pregnancy, thirty-six weeks: the way is blessed” by Sarah Gilbert Blogging Baby Apr. 10, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Aubrey in Waco, Texas, says her mother used to warn the kids against contracting honkus of the bonkus, a fanciful name for a contagious disease. This colloquial term probably comes from the words bonk and konk, meaning “to hit” or...