run the traps
v. phr.— «A related metaphor is run the traps. A hunter will check his traps in the morning to see what animals were caught; a reporter will “run the traps” of his sources to check out a story.» —by William Safire Safire’s New Political Dictionary , 1993. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A psychiatric home health worker is curious about the use of nuthouse to mean “a mental health facility.” This term goes back to the turn of the 20th century. The word nuts itself once had an extremely positive connotation, referring to...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...