squirrel-gripping
n.— «Unfortunately none of the reports I’ve seen have explained the chair-sniffing incident, which just has to have a story behind it. Buswell has, however, been accused of grabbing the testicles of MP Murray Cowper, which is apparently known in slang as “squirrel-gripping.” I had never heard this expression before but now I’m left with the question of whether “playing soccer with a quokka’” does not in fact have anything to do with football. I really don’t want to know what was meant.» —“If the country’s going Gracie so can you” by austin_dern Coati mundane May 21, 2008. (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...
How do social media algorithms shape the way we communicate? A new book argues that the competition for clicks is changing the way we speak and write, from the so-called “YouTube accent” to the surprising evolution of the word preppy. Also: A...