price of carbon
n.— «The level of that tax will be determined—exactly how has not yet been decided—by the international price of “carbon,” which is jargon for tradeable rights to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.» —“Germany’s Kyoto ruling to be felt in NZ” by Brian Fallow New Zealand Herald June 9, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A listener remembers her grandmother’s colorful comment when someone arrived late after getting lost: You went around your elbow to get to your thumb. Lots of similar sayings in English suggest roundabout routes or overcomplicated tasks, including...
A North Carolina listener is fond of the German loanword Weltschmerz, literally “world pain,” a compound word made up of Welt, cognate with English world and Schmerz, cognate with smart as in That smarts! Coined by a 19th-century German author who...