Monday hammer
n.— «Monday hammer. A 32 pound sledge hammer; means worker must have day of rest before being able to wield heavy hammer.» —“[pencil] Motormen and Conductors” by Workers at 3rd Ave. and 65th St., carbarn in New York City Lexicon of Trade Jargon , 1938-39. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning “performing a monotonous, tedious task.” At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is...
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...