boat
n.— «Edison Senat learned how to speak English in five months. The 26-year-old Haiti native didn’t want to be tagged as “boat,” a derogatory term referring to immigrants. So he made it a point to speak it as often as he could until he became fluent in English.» —“Communicator: Haitian native Edison Senat translates for Manatee students” by Sylvia Lim Bradenton Herald (Florida) Oct. 24, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
Chad in Hilliard, Florida, wonders about the expression old as Methuselah, meaning “extremely advanced in years.” The phrase references Methuselah, a figure in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian tradition said to be 969 years old when he...