curbstoning

curbstoning
 n.— «There are follow-up visits to housing units where residents did not send in forms or mailed back incomplete ones and field inspections of addresses declared vacant or listed as having only one occupant, a danger signal that a “curbstoning” census worker may not have taken the trouble to look inside.» —“Can Heads Be Counted in a Dynamic City?” by Richard Levine New York Times Sept. 22, 1990. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

It’s All in a Dezzick

The word dezzick is defined in an 1875 dictionary of the Sussex dialect as “a day’s work.” This is part of a complete episode.

Related

Sleepy Winks (episode #1584)

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...

Recent posts