sponge gun
n.— «The officers used something that is commonly called a sponge gun it’s a less than lethal weapon that we have. The weapon was deployed in an effort to avoid having to shoot this man.» —“Santa Maria Man Threatens People With Large Knife” by Carina Corral KSBY-TV (San Luis Obispo, California) Apr. 24, 2007. (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...
Old. Elderly. Senior. Why are we so uncomfortable when we talk about reaching a certain point in life? An 82-year-old seeks a more positive term to describe how she feels about her age. And: a linguist helps solve a famous kidnapping case, using the...