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poodle-balling

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)

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