heater
n.— «Hill pointed out police had called Superintendent Richard Pennington within a half-hour of the shooting, calling it evidence that “this case was a heater from the beginning.”» —“Teen Guilty Of Murder Outside Quarter Lounge” by James Varney Times-Picayune (New Orleans, La.) Jan. 27, 1996. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...