hire to play
v. phr.— «Not to be outdone, the D.C. Republicans say let’s ban gifts worth more than $20 and also outlaw the odious little practice called “hire to play.” That one has been forcing lobbying firms to hire more Republicans before they can set to work lobbying.» —“Creative thinkers will find a way around gift ban” by Mary Ann Lindley Tallahassee Democrat (Florida) Jan. 22, 2006. (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...
A caller who grew up in Wisconsin says his spouse, who’s from Florida, teases him for such things as pronouncing bagel like “BEG-el” and dagger as “DEG-ger.” They’re just products of his isolect, the regional variants from his particular dialect of...