oil spot
n.— «The movement would immediately extend into Vento and the Liguria and gradually embrace the surrounding regions “like an oil spot,” either through disorganizing and flanking operations of the militarily less organized Red elements of those districts, or by direct armed action.» —“Army Reports Reds Plot to Take Italy” by Drew Pearson Washington Post Sept. 8, 1947. (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...
Kim from Council Bluffs, Iowa, notes that kırmızı, the Turkish word for “red,” sounds a lot like the English word crimson. Are they related? Yes! Both derive from a word for the insect whose scientific name is Kermes vermilio. The English words...