cate-faced
n.— «Salladay’s greatest fear is of cat-faced timber—a tree burned out at the base by fire, leaving what appears to be a solid tree but is now just a shell with no support inside. This tree is dangerous to fell but too dangerous to let stand.» —“Hotshots On The Line Battling A Forest Fire” by Peter Korn in Ore. Chicago Tribune Nov. 15, 1987. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...