nail house
n.— «A small shack, primitively built, on the corner of a road in Shanghai, surrounded by high-rise development. Owned by a strong old woman, patronized by night-time drivers. update: ding zi hu (lit. “nail house”): person or household who refuses to move and bargains for unreasonably high compensation when the land is requisitioned for a construction project.» —“Shanghai’s Strongest Nail House” Virtual China Jan. 20, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Chris in Omaha, Nebraska, asks about the use of the adjective husky to describe the boys’ clothing section in a department store. This coded term refers to clothes made for heavier fellows. Husky was originally a positive term connoting the...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...