colour test
n.— «We were also supposed to be able to identify, when ordered to do so by a boy in a position of authority, members of staff, their subjects, classrooms, wives, children, addresses and even, where appropriate, their pets. On Sunday evenings, cowering first-years were tested as to their knowledge and understanding of these arcane matters by the Head of House. These tests were known as Colour Tests, and if you failed them, you were beaten.» —by John Peel Margrave of the Marshes Oct. 17, 2005. (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...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...