sitzprobe
n.— «I looked at the schedule and said “What’s a sitzprobe?” and they said “don’t you know? Oh dear, you are ignorant.” It’s a German word which means sitting down and singing with the orchestra. First band-call, I would have called it.» —“Half A Mo Won’t Do For The Colonel” Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) May 19, 1988. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...