sandwich eater
n.— «The official team wasn’t just kinda late, but also ineffective, according to those on the ground. “Those guys are called ‘the sandwich eaters’…The official clean-up guys hang out in their vans and then walk to the sand for the 5pm TV photo op with rakes and shovels. When they first showed up, one of our team saw them raking the sand up by the dunes and was like, “hey, that’s all nice and everything, but the oil’s over here.’”» —“Kill The Spill” by Marcus Sanders in San Francisco Surfline (Huntington Beach, California) Nov. 13, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...
We have books for language-lovers and recommendations for history buffs. • How did the word boondoggle come to denote a wasteful project? The answer involves the Boy Scouts, a baby, a craft project, and a city council meeting. • Instead of reversing...