off-gassing
n.— «Off-gassing—Also known as outgassing, this is the emission of chemicals from building materials, furniture, textiles and bedding. Many of those “new house” smells that we enjoy accumulate in the bloodstream and have been linked to increasing rates of asthma and some cancers, particularly in children.» —“Are you a little green on the ecological lingo? Here’s a primer” by Steven Barrie-Anthony Sun-Sentinel (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida) May 27, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
A caller who grew up in Wisconsin says his spouse, who’s from Florida, teases him for such things as pronouncing bagel like “BEG-el” and dagger as “DEG-ger.” They’re just products of his isolect, the regional variants from his particular dialect of...