meat tag
n.— «Robbins says that when the war on terrorism started Fort Drum soldiers wanted to identify themselves in case they were killed. They’d get what are called “meat tags”—with their name, rank, blood type and Social Security number—tattooed on their ribs. They chose that location in case limbs were lost in an explosion.» —“Troops get different tattoos leaving war” by Oren Dorell in Fort Drum, New York USA Today May 20, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...
Jill from Greenville, South Carolina, wants to know why pickle automatically means “pickled cucumber,” as opposed to other pickled vegetables, such as onions and carrots. The answer has to do with prototypicality, the cultural agreement that one...