block booking
n.— «As Ladd explained in Blockbuster, Star Wars got into the theaters because of a now illegal practice called “block booking,” which involved studios essentially holding a big movie hostage in exchange for theaters agreeing to play one of the studio’s smaller films. Fox told theater owners if they wanted “The Other Side of Midnight,” a potboiler based on the Sidney Sheldon bestseller, they had to show this little movie “Star Wars” too.» —“Star Wars: A Box Office History Lesson” by David Konow Tom’s Games Aug. 13, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Throwing cheese and shaky cheese are two very different things. In baseball, hard cheese refers to a powerful fastball, and probably comes from a similar-sounding word in Farsi, Urdu, and Hindi. Shaky cheese, on the other hand, is the grated...
Imagine telling someone how to get to your home, but without using the name of your street, or any other street within ten miles. Could you do it? We take street names for granted, but these words are useful for far more, like applying for a job or...