shadow count
n.— «For the second year, New York added a method known as “the shadow count,” developed by Dr. Kim Hopper, a medical anthropologist at the Nathan Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, N.Y. Each year, hundreds of students pose as “decoy” homeless and occupy assigned locations around the city. The percentage of decoys discovered helps to clarify how effective the street count has been.» —“ounting Them In” by Ben Fleming Resident (New York City) Feb. 20, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning “performing a monotonous, tedious task.” At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...