beater n.— «“We really wanted to be in Clinton Hill,” said his wife, a writer, describing their house hunt. “Unfortunately, we were two years too late to really find a beater.”» —“Émigrés” by Kate Julian New Yorker (New York City) Jan. 2, 2006...
Palestinian hanging n.— «The Associated Press quoted an expert who described the position in which Jamadi died as a form of torture known as “Palestinian hanging,” in which a prisoner whose hands are secured behind his back is suspended by his arms...
slab n.— «If you are a Houston m.c. of any note, you probably drive a “slab,” the local word for an enormous American car from the nineteen-seventies or eighties that has been overhauled and tricked out in high-gloss “candy paint.”» —“A Place In...
OKer n.— «There are, of course, many different kinds of editor—from fact-checkers and OKers (as they’re known at the New Yorker), to line-editors and copy editors, to editors who grasp the big picture but skip the detail.» —“Black day for the blue...
talik
n.— «The technical term for thawed permafrost is talik, from a Russian word meaning “not frozen.”» —“The Climate Of Man” by Elizabeth Kolbert New Yorker Apr. 18, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
cryoturbation adj.— «Temperatures are so low that when tree and grasses die they do not fully decompose. New plants grow out of the half-rotted old ones, and when these plants die the same thing happens all over again. Eventually, through a process...