hard eight
n.— «The toy industry calls the eight weeks leading up to Christmas the “hard eight.” That’s when prices jump for slots on kids shows and when toy ads replace cereal ads.» —“Six strategies marketers use to get kids to want stuff bad” by Bruce Horovitz USA Today Nov. 21, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sure, there’s winter, spring, summer, and fall. But the seasons in between have even more poetic names. In Alaska, greenup describes a sudden, dramatic burst of green after a long, dark winter. And there are many, many terms for a cold snap...
How do you pronounce the word mobile, as in the toy that hangs above a baby’s crib? In the United States, that kind of mobile is pronounced MOH-beel, but in the United Kingdom, it’s MOH-byle. In the early 1930s, the American sculptor Alexander...