lunch-pail mentality
n.— «He has what I call a lunch-pail mentality.…Tommy comes to work every day, and outworked people in practice. He called all our signals in the secondary, and was our quarterback on defense. Tommy is not only a good football player, but a wonderful young man. He is the consummate student-athlete, with a grade-point average above 4.0.» —“Irvin is Vikings’ defensive quarterback” by Cliff Mehrtens Charlotte Observer (North Carolina) Dec. 25, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
James in Charlotte, North Carolina, notes that when discussing a newborn baby, he’s heard people say something that sounded like, “That baby ‘woh’ seven pounds, two ounces.” He’s never heard that usage before. The...
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...