speed bump
n.— «So he began looking down a series of alleys perpendicular to a main road. Turning down one of them, his driver struck a roadway bomb, the kind soldiers call “speed bumps” or “stop-and drop” bombs because they’re laid down in the street like sandbags. “The driver of the Bradley we were looking for couldn’t back up, either, because there was another speed bump,” Rodriguez said» —“3 soldiers get Silver Stars” by Gina Cavallaro in Baghdad, Iraq Army Times Feb. 14, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Tommy in Lexington, Kentucky, reports that when he was serving in the U.S. military in Vietnam he heard the expression Mox nix, meaning “I don’t care” or “It doesn’t matter.” It’s a version of a German es Macht nichts, or “It’s nothing.” This is...
Ben Yagoda’s new book Gobsmacked: The British Invasion of American English, based on his blog Not One-Off Britishisms, which features words and phrases that are originally British but are being used more and more in the States, including cushy...