budget dust
n.— «Budget dust. A small cash amount relative to the company’s total dollar budget. Many managers are being told to spend less, but if you want to arm wrestle, try this: “Why boss, that program accounts for just budget dust; let’s keep it in.”» —“A lesson in budget dust and burn rate” by Cathy Taylor Orange County Register (California) Mar. 12, 1991. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...