curbstoning
n.— «The measure regulates realty dealers by prohibiting any one from selling land as agents for another without securing a certificate of license.…The passage of this act would effectually abolish “curbstoning,” and much of the unreliable tactics employed by irresponsible real estate sharks.» —“Worth Realty Measure” Modesto Evening News (California) Mar. 27, 1913. (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...