Belsnickle n.— «“Belsnickle,” a word meaning “Good St. Nicholas,” is a term used for a figure of Santa Claus holding a tree or branch in his folded arms. Santa is usually not smiling on a belsnickle, and the branch was originally meant as a switch...
auto grat
n.— «They didn’t leave him any tip other than the auto grat! haha!» —“Phew what a night” by WallStreetGraffiti WallStreetGraffitiPainter (Saint Augustine, Florida) Mar. 31, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
straighten out v. phr.— «In the mid-1990s, when “Little Joe” D’Angelo was “straightened out” (Mob slang for inducted) by the Gambinos, he got a hamburger in a Queens diner, D’Angelo testified last week at the Gotti trial. He said the Mob bosses who...
revocromico n.— «A new word has been coined to describe the roof system—Revocromico. Well, we can follow the “revo,” but the “cromico” refers to the fact that the glass element is a rather fancy material created by French company Saint Gobain. It’s...
Ecozoic n.— «In [Rev. Thomas] Berry’s view, the planet is moving out of the 65-million-year Cenozoic era, during which the major developments of life occurred, into a new uncertain age he calls the Ecozoic. “The major developments of the Cenozoic...
eau clair n.— «Voeckler rhymes with eau clair, the slang for riding without drugs, and the yellow jersey holder has made no bones about his opposition to doping.» —“Virenque is big cheese of mountains” by William Fotheringham in Saint-Flour...
