brown-bagging
v.— «“Brown-bag” sales—a reference to farmers’ rudimentary packaging—are prompting big seed companies to drop expensive research programs and thus give foreign competitors an advantage, the industry claims. Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc. says that brown-bagging of its version of hard red winter wheat got so prevalent in grain-belt states that the company simply ceased doing research and dropped out of the market.» —“High-Court Battle Sprouts From Clash Between Farmers and the Seed Industry” by Paul M. Barrett Wall Street Journal May 23, 1994. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...
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...