In basketball, a snowbird is a player who hangs back while the rest of her team plays defense. That way, she’s ready to break for the basket when her team gets the ball. The terms snowbird and snowbirding most likely derive from the use of the...
We have a Department of Defense, and football teams have a defense, and chances are you don’t pronounce those terms the same way. It likely has to do with sportscasters emphasizing of- and de- to differentiate the offensive and defensive sides...
stock n.—Gloss: A goal scored in basketball. «Wade will eventually shift to LeBron on defense, and while he does post some gaudy defensive numbers (almost 3 “stocks” per game, to use some Simmons parlance), most of those come as a help...
Zach, an F-18 instructor pilot calling from China Lake, California, asks whether deconflict is really a word. In aviation, it means to remove a possible conflict, such as assigning different altitudes or positions so two aircraft can share a piece...
kryptonite n.— «The same things that lowly Washington and freshman Jake Locker used to throw a serious scare into the Trojans. The same things that one USC player referred to as the team’s “kryptonite” in the days leading up...
bladed stance n.— «I’m not a cop, but a bladed stance is where, rather than being directly lined up and with both feet the same distance from who you’re facing, your body is angled with one foot further away than the other. One reason...