pixie money
n.— «Heard a new phrase recently: “Pixie money.” This, it was explained to me, is money that doesn’t really exist. For example, you could sell your Regina bungalow for $50,000 or $100,000 more than you paid for it, but you’d then have to spend even more money in order to buy another place. So you stay put, consoling yourself with the knowledge that your home theoretically has more value—though you can’t realize it unless you sell it, move and accept the financial consequences. So unless you figure out a way to “beat the system,” that soaring real estate value is pretty well imaginary—ergo, “pixie money.”» —“Changing of the guard at CTV Regina” by Will Chabun Leader-Post (Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada) Aug. 8, 2007. (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...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...