playtron n.— «Such devotion is common among “Rennies” or “playtrons,” as the most serious Renaissance-obsessed merrymakers call themselves. Many have attended the festival for decades—sometimes traveling great distances to roam the 25-acre faux...
ghost fishing n.— «Ghost fishing When lost nets, loose traps or fragments of other broken equipment continue to catch and kill marine life. Modern traps have escape vents constructed from biodegradable materials to allow lobsters to escape from...
sneak into town v. phr.— «Scarier than anything in “Captivity” was the drive to Danvers I had to go through to see it. The new horror film, a wan, derivative entry in the torture-porn cycle, didn’t screen for critics and is playing only in a few...
babymoon n.— «AT 20 weeks pregnant, Courtney Monardo, a 40-year-old processor for a mortgage company in Scottsdale, Ariz., was—to quote Madeleine Kahn in “Blazing Saddles”—“so tired.”…First on the agenda was an in-room ice cream sundae. Next, a...
loot in the boot n.— «My shape is that of a slightly distorted heavy pear: slender, Chabella-like shoulders and a gently rising collarbone cast lines that soften and swell past a high waist to what Amy and I refer to as “loot in the boot”—hips that...
Chicago way n.— «When asked how he could have pulled off such an escape, Mr. Alsammarae, who moved to Chicago in 1976 but returned to Iraq just after the invasion, laughed uproariously for 20 seconds. Then, recycling a famous line from an exchange...