pill pull
n.— «The drawing for post positions will be held on Wednesday, May 13th, at 5 PM Eastern Standard Time and the process for selecting the starting spots for the Preakness is done using a method called a “pill pull.” Similar to the process in which post positions are chosen for the Kentucky Derby, a blind draw of small, numbered ping pong-like balls will be used to figure out which horses are in what gates at post time of the 2009 Preakness Stakes. The post positions draw programming is scheduled to last roughly 30 minutes.» —“ Preakness Stakes post positions draw live on espn” by Jake Thompson TheOnlineWire.com (Miami, Florida) May 12, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
We use the term Milky Way for that glowing arc across the sky. But how people picture it varies from culture to culture. In Sweden, that starry band goes by a name that means “Winter Street,” and in Hawaii, a term for the Milky Way...
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...