outside job
n.— «“In dermatology, we speak about something called an “outside job,” which is a skin eruption made by the patient himself,” said Dr. Noah Scheinfeld, an assistant professor of dermatology at Columbia University in New York and an expert on the psychiatric origins of certain skin disorders. “When you look at the pictures of these Morgellons lesions, they are classic for that.”» —“A mystery ailment gets under skin” by Howard Witt Chicago Tribune July 25, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
An anadrome is a word that forms a whole new word when you spell it backwards. For example, the word “stressed” spelled backwards is “desserts.” Some people’s first names are anadromes. There’s the girl named Noel...
Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning “performing a monotonous, tedious task.” At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is...