iron maiden
n.— «The lady with the bag proceeded with the rush-hour crowd toward the nearest exit to the street at the uptown end of the platform. There she encountered a pair of what are officially termed High Entrance/Exit Turnstiles, or HEET. In everyday parlance, these revolving portals are called high-wheels, or more colloquially, iron maidens.» —“Our underground gated community” by Michael Daly N.Y. Daily News May 25, 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...