perp
n.— «He ordered a Boston bull terrier and when the dog come accompanied by it’s [sic] pedygree it was found the pesky perp was born in some town in Wisconsin. Whaddyamean Boston bull?» —“Clunette Clippings” Lincoln Daily News (Neb.) Mar. 29, 1915. (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...
Sara in Madison, Wisconsin, was reading an old edition of The Joy of Cooking and came across a recipe that described a cake’s ingredients as earrings for an elephant. She couldn’t discern whether the authors meant that was a good thing...