earn-out
n.— Note: OED has an entry for “earnout,” unhyphenated, added in September 2006, which defines the term as “a contractual provision whereby the seller of a business receives additional payments if the business achieves specified levels of future performance.” «As part of the original $4.1-billion bid, Skype shareholders were offered a lump sum of $2.4-billion, plus what is known as an “earn-out” clause, which would see the company receive an additional $1.7-billion if it met certain growth targets.» —“EBay’s bad Skype call” by Mathew Ingram Globe and Mail (Toronto, Canada) Oct. 4, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Outer space, used with its modern meaning, appears as early as the 1840s in a poem by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley. Soon after, Alexander von Humboldt was using variations on it in his writings about the cosmos. By 1901, H.G. Wells was using outer space...
Artie in New Bern, North Carolina, wonders why a poker hand consisting of a pair of aces and a pair of eights is called a dead man’s hand. Legend has it that when Wild Bill Hickock was killed during a poker game in 1876 in the Dakota Territory, he...