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
Roger from New Orleans, Louisiana, recalls that at odd moments in a conversation his father-in-law would toss in a puzzling non sequitur: I had one gunch, but the eggplant over there. That was probably a misunderstanding or misremembering of the...
A former resident of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, wonders why the English spoken there sounds distinct from both New Orleans English and Cajun English. It’s a combination of factors, including vowel lengthening common to the broader Southern dialect, a...