clean scanning
n.— «Over the last year, a joint investigation of emissions inspection stations by the Attorney General’s Office and MassDEP, in coordination with the Registry of Motor Vehicles, found these stations were issuing passing inspection stickers on motor vehicles that were not in fact emissions tested. This was allegedly carried out by conducting tests on a different motor vehicle and then using the results from that test to issue a passing inspection sticker to the vehicle that came in for the inspection. This practice is known as “clean scanning” and is illegal.» —“AG: Watertown man owned service station faking 208 emissions tests” in Boston Watertown TAB & Press (Needham, Massachusetts) Oct. 23, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...