smearing
n.— «The trick, Sutton explained, to climbing a friction slab, is a motion called “smearing,” in which the palms of the climber’s hands, fingers pointing down, and the balls of his rubber-soled shoes are pushed into and twisted against the granite’s surface. With his rump high in the air so that his weight is distributed evenly over the smear spots, the climber spider-walks up the surface.» —“Novice discovers the pain, pleasure and danger of rock climbing in nearby Wichita Mountains” by Jennifer Meadows Dallas Morning News (Texas) Nov. 2, 1984. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Aubrey in Waco, Texas, says her mother used to warn the kids against contracting honkus of the bonkus, a fanciful name for a contagious disease. This colloquial term probably comes from the words bonk and konk, meaning “to hit” or...