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
Why do we write the sound of a dog barking as bow wow? Isn’t that noise more like woof, woof or arf, arf or ruff ruff? Surprisingly, the oldest of these is bow wow, or as William Shakespeare wrote in The Tempest (Bookshop|Amazon), bowgh wawgh...
Vogelheu—literally, “Vogelheu”—is a Swiss dish with toasted bread, cubed and cooked with eggs and other ingredients for a tasty meal that makes efficient use of leftover bread. This is part of a complete episode.
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