dirt Navy
n.— «I’m not likely to end up back on a ship anytime soon (if ever).…You could say I’ve gone from the “blue-water” Navy to the “dirt” Navy—or the “sand” Navy in this case.» —“Looks like I’m goin’ to the Gulf for a Year…“ by An ex-Squid FirstOnes.com Forums Dec. 19, 2005. (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...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...