chicken switch
n.— «All anyone knew for sure was that the nuclear-powered attack submarine had slammed head-on into something solid and very large, and that it had to get to the surface fast. In the control room, a senior enlisted man shoved the “chicken switches,” blowing high-pressure air through the ballast tanks to force the vessel upward. Usually, the submarine would respond at once.» —“Adrift 500 Feet Under the Sea, a Minute Was an Eternity” by Christopher Drew New York Times May 18, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...
Floordrobe is the new word for an old habit: piling your clothes on the floor instead of putting them away. The Oxford English Dictionary recently added an entry for it, defining floordrobe as “an untidy heap of discarded clothing left on the floor...