rat hole
n.— «She also started to learn the offshore patois used to describe the different parts of the platform: the dog house, the monkey board, the rat hole, the cat walk.» —“Taking oil painting to a whole new platform” by Susan Mansfield The Scotsman (Scotland) Nov. 16, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Barbara Kingsolver’s book Demon Copperhead is a retelling of Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield set in today’s Appalachia. Martha shares memories of a long-ago visit to Kingsolver’s family farm in Virginia, where they...
When Marilyn from Boston, Massachusetts, used the expression Them’s the berries! with neighbors in her hometown of nearby Arlington, Massachusetts, she was surprised they were unfamiliar with it. The phrase means something like “That’s...