rice bowl
n.— «But some also comes from an institutional, bureaucratic drive to have more airplanes and a bigger share of Navy and Defense Department budgets. “The air-systems people saw that whole program as a gigantic rice bowl they could put their hands into,” a critic in the Pentagon said.» —“How Hornet Was Stripped Of Values It Began With” by Richard Halloran in Washington, D.C. New York Times Nov. 23, 1982. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Is there such a thing as a “neutral” accent, and if so what does it sound like? And that quirk in the way southern Californians talk about freeways. They’ll say things like take the 405 and get on the 8. Why the definite article...
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