mahoff
n.— «The man known as “the big mahoff” of Philadelphia gambling told the Kefauver senate crime committee today that he…denied cash payoffs to Richardson for protection.…Rosen and Weisberg, both Russian born, came to the hearing together.…Weisberg explained that “the big mahoff” means “the big shot,” but deined he had ever heard Rosen called that.» —“‘Big Shot’ Tells of Gifts to Cop in Philadelphia” by Willam Moore in Washington, D.C. Chicago Daily Tribune Feb. 20, 1951. (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...