foot bail
n.— «A routine traffic stop for failure to use a turn signal in the 1200 block of Mabel Street at 10:41 p.m. Monday turned into something different when both occupants of the car decided to make “foot bail”—policespeak for beating the heat by shank’s mare. Unfortunately for them, there’s another piece of police lingo—”You can’t outrun the Motorola” (police radio).» —“Police Blotter” by Richard Brenneman Berkeley Daily Planet (California) Aug. 12, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...