master cleanse
n.— «When Teron Beal, a songwriter and aspiring actor in Manhattan, was looking to drop weight quickly for a photo shoot, he didn’t double up on gym visits, gulp metabolic boosting pills or limit his diet to leafy greens and lean protein. Instead, he took a more drastic approach: he tried the “master cleanse,” a fast that requires subsisting for 10 or more days solely on an elixir of fresh-squeezed lemon juice, cayenne pepper, maple syrup and water.» —“I Heard It Through the Diet Grapevine” by Lola Ogunnaike New York Times Dec. 10, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Centuries ago, monks who took a vow of silence developed their own hand signs, with hundreds of gestures, that are still in use today. Plus, how do speakers of different languages distinguish similar shades and tints of colors such as red, yellow...
Dale from Huntsville, Alabama, recalls a colleague in Québec dissing imitation maple syrup as lamppost syrup. Indeed, the phrase sirop de poteau, or “pole syrup,” is a disdainful reference used by French-speaking Canadians referring to the weak...