summer melt
n.— «By late spring, millions of high-school seniors have mailed in deposits to confirm their college destinations. Some of these “confirmations,” however, will be broken. A student will be belatedly admitted to a school he prefers; a family will re-examine its college nest egg and judge it too small for a tuition omelet; little Jack will decide he would rather spend the year hitchhiking the Maghreb from Marrakesh to Mahdia. The folks who work in admissions call these defections “the summer melt.”» —“Summer Melt” by Peter Wood National Review Online June 27, 2001. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What kind of book do people ask for most often in prison? Romance novels? No. The Bible? No. The most requested books by far are … dictionaries! A number of volunteer organizations gather and distribute used dictionaries to help inmates with...
Twice a day the River Thames recedes, revealing a muddy shoreline. Hobbyists known as mudlarks stroll the surface searching for objects that have found their way into the river over the centuries, everything from ancient Roman jewelry to modern...