lucky dog
n.— «Here’s how the lucky dog works: When a caution flag comes out, NASCAR awards the first driver not on the lead lap a free pass around the track, putting that driver at the back of the pack of all cars on the lead lap. Gordon, who fell three laps down in Sunday’s Advanced Auto Parts 500, used pit strategy to make up two of those laps, but needed the lucky dog to get himself back on the lead lap, where he worked his way through traffic and, eventually, into Victory Lane.» —“‘Lucky dog’ rule—friendly or fierce?” by Jay Hart Morning Call (Allentown, Pa.) Apr. 14, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...
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...