skeempers
n.— «My father had a favorite term he used to describe anything that pinched or clasped. Consequently, the kitchen tongs and the snaps on my pajamas came to be called skeempers. The Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam Webster, spell-check and Google have never heard of it, but all of his children and grandchildren use it regularly: “Hand me the skeempers, honey. The hot dogs are done!’» —“In the realm of the coined” St. Paul Pioneer-Press (Minn.) Aug. 14, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Kentucky listener says her father often prefaced statements with the phrase I tell you what’s the truth. This regionalism appears in the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Bookshop|Amazon). A shorter version is I’ll tell you...
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...