Dover test
n.— «Since Vietnam, you may or may not have heard about the “Dover test,” which a military official coined as the threshold for what Americans could take as acceptable losses to the country, to people, and to the psyche in times of war. Dover Air Force Base in Delaware is the official entry point for America’s war dead. In the first Iraq War, the government banned media outlets from showing any returning deceased at Dover.» —“A quick note on opinion” by Chris Hall American Narcolepsy Apr. 26, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A California listener shares a couple of pranks from her time in the U.S. Marines, where unsuspecting recruits would be ordered to complete impossible tasks. She remembers that newbies would be sent to retrieve a bucket of frequency grease or a...
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...