earn or burn
v. phr.— «Most airlines let you “earn or burn” miles in a variety of ways, such as using a credit card linked to the account or spending money or miles with one of the airline’s retail, restaurant, travel or financial partners.» —“Warnings on frequent-flier miles” by Kathleen Pender San Francisco Chronicle Nov. 18, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...
Welcome to another A Way with Words newsletter! With any luck, our A Way with Words email messages don’t end up in your spam folder. But did you ever wonder why junk mail is called spam in the first place? There’s a funny story behind this term, and...