cold-iron watch
v.— «American Export Lines put “a cold-iron watch” on the $53,000,000 Savannah in Galveston, Texas, last week.…It means putting a cadre crew aboard to keep essential maintenance on a dead ship. Electricity, water, steam and other utilities are received from shore.» —“‘Cold-Iron Watch’ on Savannah Maintained by American Export” New York Times July 28, 1963. (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...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...