perp
n.— «The owners of good dogs pay and the question now remains how to secure the revenue from the perps that are always under foot, always at the heels of horses, always digging up plants in the park and forever howling and scrapping at night.» —“Who Wants To Be Dog Catcher For City” Oxnard Courier (California) Sept. 2, 1910. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
There are lots of names for mixed-breed dogs, such as Texas brown dog, TBD, Heinz 57, duke’s mixture, poi dog, and potcakes. Danes have a couple of creative names for them that involve traffic: A mutt may be called a gadekryds, or “street...
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...