mug it
v. phr.— «La Russa knew it would have haunted him the rest of his life if the Cardinals, in his colorful euphemism, “mugged it.” “It was just concern we were going to be part of history in the worst kind of way,” La Russa said. “We went through a serious period where we were having trouble getting wins.”» —“Cardinals Hope to End Series Drought” by R.B. Fallstrom Forbes.com Oct. 19, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
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...