sally-port
n.— «Directly facing the arena, a pair of massive sanitation trucks and an intricate blockade of barriers line the 33rd Street vehicle checkpoint. They are the type in use at embassies around the world. Their goal is two-fold: to protect the venue from charging vehicles intent on doing damage and to provide a secure holding location to search vehicles authorized for entry into the building. When asked to explain what the large, half-block-long vehicle checkpoint contraption was called, one of New York’s finest replied that he refers to it as a sally-port. “But don’t ask me who Sally is. I never met the person,” he laughed.» —“Security high as event begins” by Thomas Dimopoulos Saratogian (Saratoga, N.Y.) Aug. 31, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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...
When she was a child, Chris from Santa Rosa, California, misunderstood the definition of the word vehicle—with amusing results. This is part of a complete episode.
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