rat
n.— «The measure was a “rat,” which, in legislative parlance, is a favor-bestowing amendment that supporters sneak through when (wink, wink, nod, nod) no one is looking.» —“Legislative Stalling Becomes A Matter Of Degrees” by Michele Jacklin Hartford Courant (Conn.) May 26, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...