curbstoning
n.— «The regular dealers pay $50 a year license and complain that they daily encounter persons who pay no license, but watch for opportunities to make sales and frequently cause the regular brokers trouble by stepping in when sales are partly completed and claiming a part of the commission. As a first step to check this curbstone business, as it is called, the following letter was yesterday sent to the District Commissioners.» —“After Curbstone Brokers” Washington Post Aug. 10, 1893. (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...