manpad

manpad
 n.— «The Nicaraguan army sold nearly 400 shoulder-fired missiles—known in military parlance as manpads, or man-portable air defense systems—to the warring countries.» —“Rumsfeld on Mission for Haiti Aid” by John Hendren in Buenos Aires Los Angeles Times Mar. 22, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Sleepy Winks (episode #1584)

It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...

Alight from The Train

Aaron in Los Angeles, California, notes while using public transit in Britain he and other passengers were instructed to alight from the front, meaning “exit the car from the front.” Alight comes from an Old English word alihtan, literally, to...

Recent posts