manu militari
n.— «Le Pen, 78, was first out of the box. During a candidates’ forum last week in Paris organized by Elle magazine, Le Pen, who describes himself as antiabortion, said he opposed the free distribution of condoms in schools. Instead, “for those who feel the urge, I suggest the manu militari,” he said, using a Latin phrase as a euphemism for masturbation. “It’s a much simpler method.”» —“In French Campaign, A Flurry of Faux Pas” by John Ward Anderson Washington Post Apr. 12, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...