brother-in-law
v. phr.— «That said, some players have found ways to make it look as if they’re working a lot harder than they actually are. It usually happens in training camp or, occasionally, in exhibitions. There’s even a name for it: brother-in-lawing. To brother-in-law means to have an agreement with the guy across the line of scrimmage, an understanding that you’re both going to take the play off, pretending to play hard when you’re just going through the motions. When it happens, it usually takes place in practice or exhibitions, and often in the trenches.» —“Off-Season Starts Early for Some” by Sam Farmer Los Angeles Times Dec. 30, 2005. (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...
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...