pail of steam
other.— «“Pail of Steam”—This is another joke direction to a greenhorn worker, to take a pail and go get it full of steam.» —“Trade Jargon—Carpet Industry” by Ellis H. Custer in Westchester and Yonkers, N.Y. Lexicon of Trade Jargon Mar. 23, 1938. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Why would we describe something as having a meteoric rise when meteors fall to the ground? The adjective meteoric refers to the speed and duration of a meteor, not its direction. This is part of a complete episode.
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