In deafening workplaces, like sawmills and factories, workers develop their own elaborate sign language to discuss everything from how their weekend went to when the boss is on his way. Plus, English speakers borrowed the words lieutenant and...
Alex in Montreal wonders why his Canadian Armed Forces unit uses the British-style pronunciation lef-TEN-ant for lieutenant, while Americans usually say loo-TEN-ant. Both pronunciations trace to French before the word entered English, with the f...
piquerism n.— «In Michigan, for example, Detective Lieutenant Darrell Pope, a Vice-Investigator with the Michigan State Police, in a public lecture (May 1, 1979) titled, “Does Pornographic Literature Incite Sexual Assaults?” gave numerous cases...
box n.— «It’s where the drugs are. Where the crack is. An area that soft-spoken, veteran police Lieutenant Lionel Garcia calls “the box.” It’s an informal term in cop-speak that means the floating area of most concentrated crime in any given...