dog
n.— «Race track “dogs” (or the equivalent thereof) could have been a factor in the International victory of France’s Match II.…They’re in the category of the carpenter’s “Horse”…A few feet of two-by-four with four legs attached.…The removal of two legs, from one end, turns a horse into a dog. The wooden dogs, often seen in guarding a street excavation and holding a red light at night, once were stock equipment at all race tracks.…Most have been replaced by the inverted yellow traffic cones. Dogs or cones are placed several feet out from the inside rail at times when a track is wet, so that this part of the racing strip will be protected during morning workout hours.» —“About Horses And People…” by Walter Haight Washington Post, Times Herald Nov. 15, 1962. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...
Floordrobe is the new word for an old habit: piling your clothes on the floor instead of putting them away. The Oxford English Dictionary recently added an entry for it, defining floordrobe as “an untidy heap of discarded clothing left on the floor...