security theater
n.— «Refusal to go through the detector seems to trigger a “you must have something to hide” response, tempered by the usual “ethnic” and “yoof” issues, which leads to a “normal stop and search” by the attendant Police Officers (a rare sight, normally). Yesterday, there were reports of false postives from mobile phones. Is this simply more security theatre ?» —“Hammersmith Bus Station metal detector trial—more ineffective ‘security theatre’?” Spy Blog (U.K.) Dec. 8, 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...
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...