cleanout
n.— «Salvation comes in the form of large cleansing cool winds that sweep in from the northwest. But as luck would have it, Rochester is the last to benefit from Mother Nature’s air freshener. After pushing through Detroit Lakes, St. Cloud and the Twin Cities, what some experts call the “cleanout” finally reaches Rochester. “You’re the first to get dirty, and you should be the last to get clean,” said Mark Sulzbach, public information officer for the air quality unit of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.» —“Many factors to blame for our bad air” by Matthew Stolle Post-Bulletin (Rochester, Minnesota) Mar. 7, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Katherine from Allentown, Pennsylvania, remembers her grandmother teaching her to say Lucky lucky white horse, ding ding ding! whenever a white horse pulling a delivery wagon passed her house. After each ding, they were supposed to lick their left...
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...