firm base
n.— «Half of the firm base (the military term for a small, austere outpost) is occupied by the Marines, while half is for the Iraqis.» —“Iraq Journal: It’s all Arabic to them” by Julian E. Barnes in Fallujah, Iraq U.S. News & World Report July 1, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...
Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...