cold-patch
n.— «When potholes need a temporary repair, both “hot-mix” asphalt and “cold-patch” are used to repair the surface until the roadway can be re-surfaced. Most street repairs are made with “hot” asphalt, which must be delivered to the job site within a fixed period of time (or continually heated) and applied to the pothole before it hardens. But hot-mix asphalt is often too cumbersome and expensive for small street repairs, so many transportation engineers rely on “cutback” or “cold-patch” asphalt as a temporary solution. Typical cutback asphalts are made by “cutting” hot asphalt with petroleum solvents.» —“Environmental Purchasing Bulletin #65: Low-VOC Cold-Patch” King County Environmental Purchasing Program (King County, Wash.) July 31, 2001. (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...
There was a time when William Shakespeare was just another little seven-year-old in school. Classes in his day were demanding — and all in Latin. A new book argues that this rigorous curriculum actually nurtured the creativity that later flourished...