flash bang
n.— «Police Capt. Cunningham cited a December drug raid in which a woman was killed when a police diversionary explosive device, commonly known as a “flash bang,” was hurled into a rock house. Other officers, however, said a “flash bang” device was also used in Wednesday’s raid.» —“Pacoima Leaders Protest Police Use of Motorized Ram” by Patricia Klein, Stephanie Chavez Los Angeles Times Feb. 9, 1985. (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...
Aaron in Los Angeles, California, notes while using public transit in Britain he and other passengers were instructed to alight from the front, meaning “exit the car from the front.” Alight comes from an Old English word alihtan, literally, to...