duty watch bar
n.— «For members of the British Royal Navy on the two warships at the pier, it became something more than just a bar last week. “It’s the ’duty watch bar,’ ” Mark Smith, 41, a petty officer sitting in Montero’s on Sunday, said with a thick accent that was part British and part Rolling Rock. “It’s an expression. The nearest pub to the ship is the duty watch bar.”» —“The Fleet’s In: In the Harbor, and the Bar” by Michael Wilson New York Times July 11, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid a 1796 heat wave, Jane Austen wrote to her sister, “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Jane Austen’s Continual State of Inelegance in a...
Mary from Greensboro, North Carolina, asks about an expression her Canadian mother used when Mary’s room looked particularly messy: A cow couldn’t find her calf in here! The more common A cow couldn’t find its calf in this room! was popularized by...