involuntary lateral arabesque
n.— «The BBC has a tried-and-tested mechanism for removing editors who are deemed to have failed. It promotes them into utterly meaningless positions, a practice sometimes referred to as an “involuntary lateral arabesque,” or “taking ermine.”» —“Today tries to build a new tomorrow as editor moves on” by Tim Luckhurst Guardian (U.K.) Feb. 26, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Leonor from Dallas, Texas, says that when she was a child, her Spanish-speaking mother and grandmother used to her after a bump or scrape with Sana, sana, colita de rana, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana , literally, “Heal, heal, little frog’s tail...
Shaun Usher has collected many marvelous epistles in Letters of Note: Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience (Bookshop|Amazon). One of them, from E. B. White, is a thoughtful letter of encouragement urging the reader to “wind the clock, for...