rubber ear
n.— «While Scots have never been backward about coming forward with complaints, they stand more chance of getting the rubber-ear treatment than anywhere else. According to the survey, 15 per cent of Scots interviewed complained that their complaints had been ignored.» —“No Whine Please, We’re Scots!” Scottish Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland) Aug. 22, 1994. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...