hit the deuces
v. phr.— «An officer “hits the deuces”—a button on his hand-held radio—which summons a hundred guards like ants to a picnic.» —“Cell Survivor” by John Bowers Salt Lake City Weekly (Utah) Apr. 28, 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...