dead man’s curve
n.— «Failure of the clutch cable in the final moments of a flight, when the pilot hovers at low altitude before landing, wouldn’t have left Nagle enough time or airspeed momentum to recover—a vulnerable zone helicopter pilots call the dead man’s curve, slang for the height-velocity curve.» —“Lucky to be alive” by Patrick Springer The Forum (Fargo, N.D.) Apr. 25, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Language is always evolving, and that’s also true for American Sign Language. A century ago, the sign for “telephone” was one fist below your mouth and the other at your ear, as if you’re holding an old-fashioned candlestick...
Brittany in Green Coast Springs, Florida, says that when she was grumpy or irritated as a child, her mother would say a phrase that sounded like Don’t be such a scooch. This bit of Italian-American slang, often rendered as skutch, denotes a “pest”...