hundred-year cup
n.— «Instead, he bought a tire cutter. The cutter slices the tires into two half-circles. By breaking the circle, the tires don’t trap methane gas, so they stay buried. According to Staley, the U shape has a secondary benefit. When tires fall into the landfill with the “U” facing upward, he explained, they create what is referred to as a “100-year cup” that prevents substances from leaching downward. It’s the next best thing to a lined landfill, he said.» —“Discarded tires pose challenges” by Linda Halstead-Acharya Billings Gazette (Mont.) Oct. 4, 2005. (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...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...