funk
n.— «His biggest advantage, Mets Manager Willie Randolph said, is that Bradford brings “the funk.” His slider can start at a right-handed hitter’s knees and run across the plate. Or it can zip upward. His sinker, meanwhile, appears to rise before it plunges.» —“The Pitch From Down Under” by Ben Shpigel in Port St. Lucie, Fla. New York Times Jan. 16, 2006. (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...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...