Nashville number system
n.— «On a legal pad he had “charted” the five songs, using what’s called the Nashville number system, a time-saving trick that assigns a number to each chord in the do-re-mi musical scale, making it easier for musicians to change keys without rewriting the chart. We listened to my originals one by one.» —“When Walter Mitty Met Conway Twitty” by Bob Baker New York Times Mar. 25, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A listener in Unadilla, New York, says her husband, whose family is French-Canadian, uses the phrase That burns my onions when something irritates him. There are several kitchen-related metaphors used to express anger, including that steams my...
Do you refer to nighttime sleepwear as jammies, jommies, or something else? A Nashville, Tennessee, woman says that her family referred to pajamas as jommies, while her husband’s family always called them jammies. Although jammies is the far more...