pull
v.—Gloss: to participate in an arm-wrestling contest. «Arm wrestling—or “pulling,” as the devotee knows it—has its subtleties, believe me.…Bean is a massive, radiant, heavy-booted man in his 50s, with a white handlebar mustache and, like other senior pullers whose hands I have shaken, a walnut-sized bolus of muscle at the base of his right thumb.…The victor meanwhile is expanding in rosy magnanimity. “Nice pull, nice pull,” says everybody.» —“A Hello To Arms” by James Parker Phoenix (Boston, Massachusetts) Oct. 17, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A physician in Blowing Rock, North Carolina, shares some of the vocabulary of his patients from Appalachia. There, a misery is anything painful, such as a misery in my jaw if they have a painful tooth or a misery in my back if they have lumbar pain...
While compiling the Oxford English Dictionary, lexicographer James Murray exchanged hundreds of letters a week with authors, advisors, and volunteer researchers. A new collection online lets you eavesdrop on discussions about which words should be...