bullet sponge
n.— «Fighting in there “is going to be chaotic,” he said. There’ll be lots of ricochets, concussions, shrapnel, and nowhere to crawl in retreat. “The first guy is going to go down.…He’s going to be a bullet sponge,” Rinehart said.» —“Soldiers train to a fighting edge” by Michael Gilbert News Tribune (Tacoma, Washington) Mar. 14, 2002. (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...
Have you ever googled your own name and found someone else who goes by the very same moniker? There’s a word for that: googleganger. Plus, the language of hobbyists and enthusiasts: If you’re a beekeeper, perhaps you call yourself a...