five-thousand-mile screwdriver
n.— «When people say, ‘You screwed up the postwar plan,’ what people don’t understand is that we had all kinds of plans. But when Bremer”—Paul Bremer, who was appointed by President Bush to oversee the rebuilding of Iraq—“went over there, he was given autonomy over all kinds of plans that he didn’t implement. The Secretary didn’t want to use the five-thousand-mile screwdriver.”» —“A Little Learning” by Jeffrey Goldberg New Yorker May 9, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
When there’s no evening meal planned at home, what do you call that scramble to cobble together your own dinner? Some people apply acronyms like YOYO — “you’re on your own” — or CORN, for “Clean Out your Refrigerator...
One of the most powerful words you’ll ever hear — and one of the most poignant — isn’t in dictionaries yet. But it probably will be one day. The word is endling, and it means “the last surviving member of a species.” The...