cold iron
v.— «The captain…explained that the supercarrier had no power of her own; she was “cold iron.”» —“Carrier Saratoga Floated for Final Fitting as World’s Most Powerful Ship” by Michael James New York Times Jan. 29, 1956. (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...