blow up
v. phr.— «He served on staffs that “blew up,” coaching parlance for a mass firing at the end of a losing season.» —“Coaches earn big assist: Major football programs boost salaries” by Tim Griffin Express-News (San Antonio, Texas) May 18, 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...