lily pad
n.— «We are already “reconfiguring our footprint”—that is, reviewing deployment of our troops globally to make us capable of applying mobile force anywhere rather than to sit in place to meet any specific threat. That’s part of the “lily pad concept,” on the analogy of frogs hopping around a number of forward bases.…Saudi threats to restrict our use of bases there caused us to build a Qatar lily pad. Would Germany also prove unreliable as a jumping-off point in a crisis?» —“Germany no longer necessary” by William Safire in Washington, D.C. Times Union (Albany, N.Y.) Sept. 19, 2002. (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...
Mary Beth in Greenville, South Carolina, wonders: Why do we say four-oh-nine for the number 409 instead of four-zero-nine or four-aught-nine? What are the rules for saying either zero or oh or aught or ought to indicate that arithmetical symbol...