blind
adj.— «Top Government sources have told The Sunday Express that a majority of the 2,000-strong Krasnopol inventory has been found defective: the shell, priced over Rs 15 lakh per piece, hits the target accurately during test-firing but fails to explode on impact. In military parlance, these shells are “blind” or duds.» —“Most of Krasnopol ammo for Bofors guns turn out duds” by Shishir Gupta in New Delhi Sunday Express (India) Nov. 26, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
The English language has been greatly enriched by borrowings from the languages of Asia. Barely scratching the surface, we have from Japan skosh, tycoon, tsunami, origami, yen, kimono, futon, and karaoke. From Chinese comes yen, kowtow, gung ho, and...
Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...