interview without coffee
n.— «The first step will be a formal reprimand by a senior officer, who could even be the Commander-in-Chief of UK Land Command, General Sir Mike Jackson. The procedure is known in the Army as “an interview without coffee.” The outcome will be reflected in his service record.» —“RIR officer ‘reprimand’” Belfast News Letter (Ireland) Sept. 16, 2000. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Rose in Lebanon, Virginia recalls a phrase passed down from her great-grandmother: The night before the first day of school, parents would come into the children’s bedroom and say in a singsong voice: School butter, school butter. This...
In an interview about her magisterial history of the Great Migration, The Warmth of Other Suns (Bookshop|Amazon), Isabel Wilkerson noted that her own writing process poses the same challenge any writer has: “One word followed by another word...