circuit breaker n. a rule or law that puts protective measures in place once a certain level of financial activity has been reached; (specifically) a law that provides tax refunds once a maximum of property taxes have been paid; a rule that shuts down or limits trading action when a stock market’s value or activity changes more than a certain percentage. Editorial Note: In Australia and New Zealand an additional meaning of the term is used, given by the Macquarie Dictionary as “an event, activity, etc., which acts as a distraction from previous preoccupations and tensions.” (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A listener named Tami contacted the show by WhatsApp to say that whenever someone would be talking about a subject that nobody else knew anything about, her father-in-law would respond with I had one of those, but the wheels came off. This is part...
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...