poodle-balling
n.— «“Don’t you think it knows the other plants are laughing at it?” Turnbull said recently as she drove by a bizarre little tennis ball that was once a shrub. Trimming a row of boxwoods or yew into a hedge is fine, but she believes poodle-balling a forsythia or mock orange, which wants to be a fountain of flowers, takes bad taste to the level of immorality.» —“She’s Struggling To End ‘Senseless Torture’ Of Trees” by Constance Casey Times-Picayune (New Orleans, Lousiana) July 19, 1998. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What kind of book do people ask for most often in prison? Romance novels? No. The Bible? No. The most requested books by far are … dictionaries! A number of volunteer organizations gather and distribute used dictionaries to help inmates with...
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...