heart attack kid
attrib.— «He won the Santa Anita Derby in 1958. No—he swamped The Derby in 1958. He came from 30 lengths out of it to an unbelievable victory. Of course, he won other contests zooming up from as much as 40 lengths off the pace. Between gasps, fans called him “The Showboat” and “The Heart Attack Kid.”» —“’…And Here Comes Silky Sullivan!'” in advertisement Los Angeles Times Mar. 25, 1975. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Montana farmer says his dad used to warn against catching the epizooty. In 1872, an epizootic respiratory disease among horses nearly brought the United States to a standstill. The word epizootic is modeled on the Greek word epidemic, from Greek...
One of the most powerful words you’ll ever hear — and one of the most poignant — isn’t in dictionaries yet. But it probably will be one day. The word is endling, and it means “the last surviving member of a species.” The...