only meatball in the rice
n.— «I didn’t want her to be the only meatball in the rice, but I didn’t want her to go to an all-black school and get up with some of this so-called ghetto stuff.» —“Felon makes new life as a dad” by Jennifer Jacobs Des Moines Register (Iowa) Sept. 2, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A magnificent new book celebrates the richness and diversity of 450 years of written and spoken English in what is now the United States. It’s called The People’s Tongue, and it’s a sumptuous collection of essays, letters, poems...
Amid a 1796 heat wave, Jane Austen wrote to her sister, “What dreadful hot weather we have! It keeps me in a continual state of inelegance.” This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Jane Austen’s Continual State of Inelegance in a...