creeping crud
n.— «Pharmacists who don’t write the name of the medicine on the bottle, only the name of the doctor (illegible) and a number. So six months later you can’t use your specific for creeping crud because you don’t know which bottle to shake well.» —“Criticall Speaking” by Robert Pollak The Austin News (Chicago, Illinois) May 19, 1965. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...
Kate in Omaha, Nebraska, wonders about the expression Doctor of Humane Letters, an honorary degree conferred by Creighton University. The words humane and letters in this case mean something slightly different from their modern meanings. The older...