knock
n.— «The knock among the craftsmen and contractor, fishermen and lawyer barflies I run with is that the Gravy Yard, as they call it, is a bit of a club. Someone can get you “in” as a maintenance or whatever grunt, then five years later getting paid on an underwater welder’s scale, even though the only time the guy puts on his wet suit is when he goes surfing.» —“The privatizing of the American military” by Chris Elliott Portsmouth Herald News (Del.) May 18, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
National Book Award winner Barry Lopez had wise advice for young writers. First, read widely and follow your curiosity. Second, travel or learn a foreign language. And third, find out what you truly believe, because if you’re not writing from...
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...