monster
n.— «The $30 worth of hits turned into a $3,000-a-month monster. Now the monster is Irene’s top priority. She’s been on crack three years. Three times in rehab. Three times a failure. “This is not an addiction that you can click off and on like a light switch,” she said. “You gotta set a goal and you work up towards that goal.”» —“Feeding the monster: Life of a cocaine addict” by Glenn E. Rice Kansas City Star (Kan., Mo.) Apr. 11, 1993. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Advice about college essays from the winner of a top prize for children’s literature: Kelly Barnhill encourages teens to write about experiences that are uniquely their own, from a point of view that is theirs and no one else’s. Plus, why do we say...
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a word-pecker is “a person who trifles or plays with, or quibbles over, words.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Word-Peckers” I always love it when I’m looking through the dictionary and...