elephant cage
n.— «On base is a maze of wire and steel rods laid out over an area larger than a football field. Local people call it “the elephant cage.” It houses one of the most important intelligence-gathering operations the U.S. military is conducting in the Indochina war.» —“GIs at a Secret Base—Plenty of Time to Worry” by Michael Morrow in Ramasun, Northeastern Thailand Washington Post, Times Herald Sept. 14, 1972. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Ryan, a wildland firefighter from Asheville, North Carolina, asked about bagger, a derogatory term for “a lazy or amateur firefighter.” The term likely comes from military slang, where bagger is short for dirtbagger or S-bagger, most likely deriving...
If you work in tech support, you might use snarky slang for problems caused by computer users themselves. There’s the acronym PEBCAK, for example, which stands for Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard. And: a lush poem about the sea inspired by...