elephant
n.— «Vale threw a party in Ulan Bator with samba dancers flown in from Brazil to mark the company’s arrival in Mongolia to search for another “elephant”—mining parlance for a big discovery.» —“Ivanhoe Seeks Riches Selling Output of Mongolian Mine to China” Bloomberg.com Oct. 27, 2004. (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...