rowdy-sheeter n. a person with a criminal record; a hardened criminal. Editorial Note: A synonym is history-sheeter. In India, a rowdy is far more often used than in other Anglophone countries to mean a lawless or disorderly person. Therefore, a rowdy sheet is what is known in the U.S. as a rap sheet—a criminal record—and a person who has such a record is therefore a rowdy-sheeter. (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...
What’s up with ketchup? The shifting history and spelling of the name of this condiment. For centuries, ketchup was a fishy sauce originating in Asia—the tomatoes came only later! Plus, a new book shows what’s lost when a language dies: when there...