pooled spray
n.— Note: Describes the same event as this citation for spray. «Mr Obama’s team, however, said that there never had been plans for anything but only a pooled spray, in which a handful of journalists pose questions in a more informal setting. The British Embassy sought to bridge the linguistic divide by referring to a “press availability.” Downing Street insisted that it was still a “press conference,” although one official added the caveat that “the new Administration has its own way of doing things.”» —“Gordon Brown and Barack Obama at ease after a little linguistic difference” by Tom Baldwin Times (London, England) Mar. 4, 2009. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Long before Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the Little House on the Prairie (Bookshop|Amazon), she worked as a journalist, chronicling life in the Ozarks. In one of her early writings, Wilder refers to what she calls “the famous question”: How old is...
Our conversation about bang out sick and bang in sick, both meaning to “call one’s employer to say they’re not coming in to work,” prompted a response from historian Judith Flanders, who notes that in the UK, there’s a tradition of banging out...