farming one’s insurance
n.— «Other growers and government officials said some of the farmers who started growing sweet potatoes had never grown them before. Others planted in areas known to be wet. Still others didn’t take care of their crops, saving money on fertilizers and other production costs, only to turn around and file insurance claims when their yields were poor—a practice known as “farming your insurance.”» —“Sweet Potato Experience: ‘Farming Your Insurance’” by Gilbert M. Gaul in Whiteville, North Carolina Canton Repository (Ohio) Oct. 15, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Some college students are using the word loyalty as a synonym for monogamy. Are the meanings of these words now shifting? Plus, a biologist discovers a new species of bat, then names it after a poet he admires. Also, warm memories of how a childhood...
A North Carolina listener is curious about his meemaw’s use of a term meaning “food” that he heard as either jasmine or jassum. A dialectal term with various spellings that include jassum, jasum, and jazm can mean “gravy,” “sauce,” or even “juice...