package
n.— «It rankles, however, that he was not able to have the inmates recognised as people. Mr Errachidi said: “Even the name detainee was not given to us. We were called packages because we were in identical jumpsuits and wrapped up in chains. Two guards would escort you everywhere, they would radio their control room and say, ’Package has been picked up’ and outside the interrogation room they would contact the interrogator and say, ’Package is at the door.’ If you ask why you are called a package, why you can’t be called a person they say, ’This is the procedure.’” The same procedures forbid the guards from telling the inmates what day or month it is.» —“The London chef who was forsaken for five years in Guantanamo” by Sean O’Neill Times (London, England) June 16, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A mangle is an old device for squeezing water from laundry. In 19th-century England, this word figured in the discourteous catchphrase Has your mother sold her mangle? The question implies that the person addressed has to make ends meet by selling...
Among London cabbies, a musher is somebody who owns their own cab, a starving musher is someone still paying for their cab, and musher’s lotion is rain. The book Schott’s Significa: A Miscellany of Secret Languages (Bookshop|Amazon)...