rat hole
n.— «The intervening space between tire and wheel well is sometimes called the dead cat hole, according to Peter Davis, director of interior design for global compact utility vehicles at G.M. More colorful and less formal terms come in handy in the studio. Mr Davis supplied rat holes, which, he said, were the “small unwanted, usually triangular holes that result from parts coming together.”» —“Body Language: How to Talk the Designers’ Talk” by Phil Patton New York Times Apr. 1, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Outer space, used with its modern meaning, appears as early as the 1840s in a poem by Emmeline Stuart-Wortley. Soon after, Alexander von Humboldt was using variations on it in his writings about the cosmos. By 1901, H.G. Wells was using outer space...
Nancy Gabriel from Ithaca, New York, recalls her father’s no-nonsense responses to minor injuries when she was a child: After making sure she was really all right, he’d say, It’s far enough from your heart; it won’t kill you. Other times he might...