spaghetti bowl
n.— «One of Washington’s most belabored cliches is “strange bedfellows,” as applied to people labeled as liberals or conservatives who come together, however briefly or accidentally, in the normal course of earning a living in the ideological spaghetti bowl of national politics.» —“Briefing” by James F. Clarity, Warren Weaver Jr. New York Times July 2, 1983. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Sigrin writes from Albany, New York, that she misheard our earlier conversation about the expression shaving yak hair meaning “performing a monotonous, tedious task.” At first she thought we said shaving gnat hair, which she figures is...
Many of us struggled with the Old English poem “Beowulf” in high school. But what if you could actually hear “Beowulf” in the English of today? There’s a new translation by Maria Dahvana Headley that uses contemporary...