cowdust time
n.— «By “cowdust time,” the evocative Indian term for dusk, we are still 30 miles from our village. After asking the way a dozen times (Indians tend to be relaxed about the subtle difference between “left”and “right”), eventually we find it but, in the darkness, it looks like no Indian village we have ever seen.» —“My village hut’s a mansion” by Stephen McClarence in India Telegraph (U.K.) May 6, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Miley in The Dalles, Oregon, asks about going gunny bags meaning to “break down” or “go haywire.” Her mother uses this expression, but has no idea where she picked it up. The term gunny sack, referring to a bag made of coarse material such as jute...
When an archaeological curator discovered pages of strange code in a secret pocket inside a vintage dress, it set off a years-long search to decipher the seemingly unrelated lists of words. The mystery was solved in 2018, when a researcher at the...