A woman from Cape Cod is looking for a polite word that means the current wife of my ex-husband. She’s thinking about cur-wife, but somehow that doesn’t quite work. Neither does the phrase “that poor woman.” The hosts try to help her come up with...
fuel poor adj.— «It is estimated that by Christmas 6m households will be defined as “fuel poor”—spending more than 10% of their income on gas and electricity. The prospect of the government fulfilling its 2001 pledge to eradicate fuel poverty now...
cranial-rectal inversion n.— «I learned that Officer Sam Morgan, of the California Highway Patrol, occasionally uses the term “cranial-rectal inversion” when referring to drivers of especially poor judgment, which was one of the most satisfactory...
fauji n.— «The young, mostly male Punjabis are not lawfully in Britain and they have few legal rights. They are known as “Faujis,” a Punjabi term colloquially used to describe illegal immigrants, and are mostly poor farmers from the Punjab in India...
medically homeless adj.— «Safety-net facilities take pressure off of emergency rooms by caring for people who are medically homeless, a term for people who don’t have a family doctor.» —“Clinics for the poor have own needs” by Tim...
south to south adj.—Gloss: arbitrary jargon used at the World Bank to indicate migration from one poor country to another. “South to north” indicates migration from a poor country to a rich one. «There are 74 million “south to south” migrants...