mean-mugging n.— «Oakland is a town where “mean mugging,” the slang expression for looking at someone the wrong way, results in lethal exchanges of gunfire.» —“Decaying park reflects Oakland problems” by John...
naco adj.— «Middle-class Mexicans, she said, tend to use a single adjective to dismiss all that is perhaps most real and most wonderful about Mexican culture, simply because it is dark-complexioned and simply because it springs from the...
Portunol n.— «In Portuguese Africa, I find I can muddle along by speaking something that might be referred to as portunol—basically Spanish, with as many Portuguese words, word-endings and inflections as I can muster.» —“In...
OSO n.— «“Polyamory is never having to say you’ve broken up,’’ said Sally Amsbury of Oakland, whose sex and love life openly includes her husband and two “other significant others,” known in polyamory parlance as “OSOs...
watermelon n.— «Major Robert D’Aubuisson, leader of the ultra right Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA), likes to compare the Christian Democrats to a watermelon. “Green (the Christian Democrats’ official color) on the...