pimping
v.— « For years, many professors routinely peppered students with relevant and arcane queries, often embarrassing them. Things may be gentler today, but the practice, referred to as the “pimping” of students, still has its advocates.» —“Young Doctors Learn Quickly in the Hot Seat” by Barron H. Lerner New York Times Mar. 14, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning “performing a monotonous, tedious task.” At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...