Grand Bargain
n.— «The harder part will be trying to follow that up by creating what is coming to be known in Obama circles as a Grand Bargain: getting everyone to agree to clean up the nation’s budget mess in a really big way, one that doesn’t just fix the problems being created now, but also addresses the frightening long-term problems America was going to face anyway to pay for Social Security and Medicare in coming decades. For this Grand Bargain to work, all sides would agree to sacrifice some part of their agenda. The price they would agree to pay would be unhappiness—temporary, perhaps, but real—among their constituents and favorite special interests. Their reward would be a cure for problems everybody knows they’d have to deal with a few years down the road.» —“Obama Targets a ‘Grand Bargain’ to Fix Budget Mess” by Gerald F. Seib Wall Street Journal Jan. 16, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...
You may have a favorite word in English, but what about your favorite in another language? The Spanish term ojalá is especially handy for expressing hopefulness and derives from Arabic for “God willing.” In Trinidad, if you want to ask...