soft phone
n.— «The new system will use phones known in the industry as “soft phones” because they are embedded in computers, and “everything is fully redundant, so if a line gets cut, there are no single points of failure in the system,” Mr. Cosgrove said. He said there are also plans to feed images from street cameras into the 911 call centers.» —“For $1.5 Billion, New York Plans a Much-Delayed Overhaul of 911″ by Al Baker New York Times July 3, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Brian from Lafayette, Indiana, wonders why chicken is abbreviated CHX in the restaurant industry. Using X as a substitute or shortener has a long history. Medieval scribes sometimes drew a line through the final stroke of an abbreviated word. This...
Nancy Gabriel from Ithaca, New York, recalls her father’s no-nonsense responses to minor injuries when she was a child: After making sure she was really all right, he’d say, It’s far enough from your heart; it won’t kill you. Other times he...