paper barrel
n.— «Between 2002 and the present, MacIntyre said, trading in the West Texas crude jumped from 78 million barrels a year to 86.4 million barrels. Such trading involves what are called “paper barrels.” A buyer need not take what is known as “wet delivery.”» —“A real pain in the gas” by Roger Phelps Folsom Telegraph (California) June 24, 2008. (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...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...