nixie fighter
n.— «From a former tough, a so-called nixie fighter (an old police term for one who fights officers): “Brings back memories. Gawd, how I miss em! I was part of a crowd that proudly fought the cops outside a 7-11. I can still hear the obscene taunts the women screeched, the surreal lighting, the way it affected the color of a bottle if you threw it and the funny shadows it made on the potholes in the parking lot.”» —“‘Bloody Third’ spurs eloquent recollections from readers” by Bill McClellan St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Mo.) Feb. 3, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
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...