disco car n.— «Like the mythological “disco cars” of the 70’s, the last cars of certain trains that were supposedly reserved for using and selling drugs, the F is reserved for those who read books reviewed in The New Yorker.» —“Call It Booklyn” by...
elective cinema n.— «Ross’s friend Walter Salles, who directed “The Motorcycle Diaries,” and who first suggested the Brazil trip to him, coined the term “elective cinema”: in the cyclorama you’d have to choose which section of the screen to watch...
Beckham bone n.— «The Jones fracture, as it came to be called, occurs near the ankle end of the bone, and befalls dancers and soccer players (the metatarsal is known in England as “the Beckham bone”); the Vineyard fracture, meanwhile, is an...
yahoo-yahoo boy n.— «Today, the con usually relies on e-mail and is often called a 419 scheme after the anti-fraud section of the criminal code in Nigeria, where it flourishes.…The scammers, who often operate in crime rings, are known as “yahoo...
power wall n.— «The Scorseses do not have what is known in Washington as a power wall, a gallery of me-with-important-people photographs. Instead, in their living room, the art work and the memorabilia pay tribute to ancestry and the movies...
runner n.— «“If he was on a runner, we could pick him up several times a day,” Patrick O’Bryan, who is a bicycle cop in downtown Reno, said. “And he’s gone on some amazing runners. He would get picked up, get detoxed, then get back out a couple of...
