smog
v.— «Arthur Garcia had been driving the same small, 22-year-old truck to work and back for the last 12 years. But when it came time in May to get his pickup “smogged,” Californian slang for an emissions test, his local garage told him that the vehicle would not pass, not even with a tune-up.» —“There is gold in that smogmobile” CNN.com July 11, 2000. (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...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...