buster slash n.— «A patch from a Groom Lake unit shows the letter sigma with the “buster” slash running through it, as in the movie “Ghost Busters.”» —“Inside the Black Budget” by William J. Broad New York...
poach v.— «Burton has committed $20,000 to a campaign for equal access for snowboarders. Earlier this month, he said he would award $5,000 to boarders who submit the best footage of themselves riding at resorts that prohibit them—a...
Stand back! It's another missive from A Way with Words. This past weekend's show took a look at word-geek books suitable for reading and gift-giving. We also took a shot at explaining "gedunk" (which means "ice...
A caller asks about how lakes get named, and we talk about a lake with a 45-letter Indian name that may or may not translate as, “You fish on your side, I fish on my side and nobody fishes in the middle.” It’s Lake...
groundtruthing n.— Note: OED defines this as “the action or process of establishing ground truth,” and defines “ground truth” as “information obtained by direct measurement at ground level, rather than by...
jumbo n.— «The Red Lake gold mine covers 55,000 acres of western Ontario, amid mountains, creeks, and pine forests populated by wild caribou. In its main shaft, which plunges 1,023m into the earth, drilling machines called jumbos extract...
