fairy dust
n.— «Company employees knew of the false accounting entries and referred to them as “pixie dust” or “fairy dust,” according to the committee’s report.» —“HealthSouth CEO’s trial has local angle” by Jim Hall Free Lane-Star (Fredericksburg, Va.) Mar. 11, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
After hearing our conversation about how dictionaries decide on a preferred pronunciation, and specifically about how to pronounce aioli, Vern from San Diego, California, wrote to say that a friend once made fun of him for pronouncing grimace with a...