close the door
v. phr.— «At 200 metres to go, with the peloton together as they approached the line, the Belgian Tom Boonen jumped a length clear, and McEwen sprinted hard to grab the favoured position, directly behind the leader, ready to pounce. But O’Grady had a similar idea. And as he moved alongside McEwen he “closed the door” in cycling parlance, by moving deftly to the left. Finding himself hopelessly blocked in, McEwen did the first thing that came to his head: he used it to try and force O’Grady out of the way, not once but twice.» —“Tour rider disqualified for head-butt” by Richard Moore in Tours, France Scotsman (Glasgow, Scotland) July 5, 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...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...