river rash
n.— «“It’s like I told the U.P.S. man the other day, it’s the challenge,” said Mr. Ramsey, who has a tattoo of a catfish on one shoulder and whose forearms are cross-hatched with battle scars, known in noodling circles as “river rash.” “Anybody can throw a trout line in the river and hang a perch on it. But very few people are going get in the river, and wade around and look for a hole in the bank, stick your hand in there, and hope it’s a catfish.”» —“The Catfish Are Biting (and It Hurts)” by Malcolm Gay in Cowden, Illinois New York Times July 28, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
How do you transform ancient Chinese script for use in the modern age? English uses a keyboard with just 26 letters, but the first Chinese typewriter looked like a small table under a huge disk with more than 4,000 characters. A new book chronicles...
Chase from Jacksonville, Florida, grew up in Sacramento, California, where kids played Rochambeau instead of rock, paper, scissors. Why the difference in names? Nobody knows. Folklorists call this a choosing game, and while the hand-game itself...