elephant
n.— «Though more than a thousand discoveries are made in the U.S. yearly, “elephant fields”—those containing proven recoverable reserves of 100 million barrels of oil, one trillion cubic feet of gas, or the equivalant in mixed reserves—are rare. » —“Hottest U.S. Hydrocarbon Hunt Is In Western Rock Formation” Wall Street Journal Aug. 27, 1979. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sara in Madison, Wisconsin, was reading an old edition of The Joy of Cooking and came across a recipe that described a cake’s ingredients as earrings for an elephant. She couldn’t discern whether the authors meant that was a good thing...
Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...