buffet flat
n.— «The casual, migratory and unskilled drinkers of the world, along with a scattering of habitual, non-migratory and skilful [sic] drinkers, have found a new haven. It is the buffet flat and the New York police are authority for the statement that there are now about 10,000 of these sheltered retreats in Manhattan and Brooklyn and they are diverting streams of “sucker” money from the night clubs and they constitute a new and baffling factor in the problem of liquor law enforcement.» —“Buffet Flat Solves Many of High Society’s Drinking Problems” by Harvey Anderson in New York City Port Arthur News (Texas) Jan. 9, 1927. (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...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...