comp
n.— «His first assignment as he shadowed the team: cleaning up a three-week “comp” near Milwaukee, Wisc. That’s shorthand for “an apartment in which someone died and laid, unfound, for three weeks.”» —“‘Aftermath’ is not for the fainthearted” by Terri Schlichenmeyer Eagle-Tribune (North Andover, Massachusetts) June 10, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Mark in Bismarck, North Dakota, spent years as a sailor, and wonders about the term sea painter, meaning “a rope attached to a lifeboat.” Why painter? The word may derive from Middle French pendeur meaning “a kind of rope that...
A resident of Michigan’s scenic Beaver Island shares the term, boodling, which the locals use to denote the social activity of leisurely wandering the island, often with cold fermented beverages. There have been various proposed etymologies...