check off fee
n.— «Also Monday, the court upheld a federal program that requires beef producers to pay $1 for each head of cattle sold in, or imported into, the USA for a fund that produces advertising such as the “Beef: It’s What’s for Dinner” campaign. Ranchers had claimed that the “check off” fee, as it is called, was a violation of their free-speech rights.» —“Court: Shackles sway jurors in death cases” by Joan Biskupic in Washington, D.C. USA Today May 23, 2005. (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...
A young caller from the Hudson Valley of New York wonders about his grandmother’s use of stemwinder to praise a speech she thought was excellent. In the early 1800s, people used pocket watches that had to be wound with a tiny key. Once someone...