self-licking ice-cream cone
n.— «However disappointing Colin Powell’s knee-jerk saluting of the commander-in-chief, at least Powell had been around and knew something of the world. (Rumsfeld, of course, is good riddance.) But what you now have around the president is what we call, in intelligence parlance, a self-licking ice-cream cone.» —“Why the Iraq Study Group Won’t Get Us Out of Iraq” by Ray McGovern Counterpunch Nov. 14, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Have you ever googled your own name and found someone else who goes by the very same moniker? There’s a word for that: googleganger. Plus, the language of hobbyists and enthusiasts: If you’re a beekeeper, perhaps you call yourself a...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...