katastroika
n.— «In the first phase of Mr Gorbachev’s rule, some Russians thought that glasnost was just a trick to get the reformers to stick their heads above the parapet and identify themselves. “Perestrelka,” said the satirists, meaning a general shoot-up. Now the joke is at the expense of the economic collapse: “katastroika.”» —“Five Years of Gorbachev: Soviet fears of katastroika” by Jonathon Steele Guardian (U.K.) Mar. 9, 1990. (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...
In 1971, when a new public library opened in Troy, Michigan, famous authors and artists were invited to write letters to the city’s youngest readers, extolling the many benefits of libraries. One of the loveliest was from E.B. White, author of...