monoline
n.— «Only 13 companies belong to MICA. They are the closely regulated “monoline” mortgage insurance firms that only guarantee mortgage loans, with state laws forbidding them to enter any other insurance business.» —“Escrow Losses Could Hamper Private Issuers” by David LaGesse in New York City American Banker Feb. 13, 1985. (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...