snag
n.— «Cash L. Hopkins, 25, an inmate from the Indian Ridge Corrections Center in Snohomish County, was killed Aug. 18 at the Ace Creek fire when a burning snag fell on him.» —“Forest-Fire Death Spurs State Review” in Spokane Seattle Times (Wash.) May 17, 1987. (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...
A librarian opens a book and finds a mysterious invitation scribbled on the back of a business card. Another discovers a child’s letter to the Tooth Fairy, tucked into a book decades ago. What stories are left untold by these forgotten...