hard stop
n.— «If, as suggested, the strategy was to arrest anyone emerging from the Tulse Hill address as soon as possible and the Gold Commander instructed that the target was not to be allowed to enter the Tube, why did the eventual “hard stop”, as it is known, take place underground?…What decision-making process led to the fatal shooting if, as claimed, one officer had pinned Mr de Menezes in his seat?» —“Power struggle over Tube inquiry?” by Jon Silverman BBC News (U.K.) Aug. 18, 2005. (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...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...