fascia
n.— «NASCAR inspectors ordered the rear-end bodywork cut completely off the No. 3, claiming the rear fascia was an experimental, unapproved part. On a production car, the rear fascia would be loosely defined as the back end of the car, the place where you’d find the rear bumper, taillights, and trunk opening. On a Winston Cup car, these individual components are replaced with the one-piece fascia, which is made of composite plastics.» —“Talladega 2000: Running Wild” by Tom Jensen Kansas City Star (Kan., Mo.) Jan. 15, 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...