shock
v.— «Ragan then fills the pool with water, shocks it and checks it about a week later to see if the chemicals are OK. “Shocking” a pool refers to using a chemical process called oxidization to break down water-soluble bather waste. Nobody wants to take a dip in a pool of dead skin cells, body oils, sweat and cosmetics, and other unmentionable icky stuff. Some things need to be shocked.» —“Gentlemen, start your pools” Sioux City Journal (Iowa) May 15, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Throwing cheese and shaky cheese are two very different things. In baseball, hard cheese refers to a powerful fastball, and probably comes from a similar-sounding word in Farsi, Urdu, and Hindi. Shaky cheese, on the other hand, is the grated...
After our conversation about towns with extremely short names, many listeners wrote to tell us about Why, Arizona. Others pointed out that there are towns called Ely in Iowa, Minnesota, and Nevada. Other super-short appellations include Rye, New...