It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Will, an emergency medical technician in Queens, New York, offers this bit of lingo from his line of work: skell, meaning a “lowlife.” In South African slang, the word skelm means the same thing. Will and his colleagues also use the term...
John, a Navy veteran in San Diego, California, shares some pranks played on new recruits. One involves sending a newbie to the boatswain’s locker for ten yards of gig line. In military jargon, a gig line is the imaginary line from the middle...
Would you call an artist who paints a painter, or does painter only apply to a technician, like one who paints houses? This is part of a complete episode.
gross room technician n.— «Grant became a deiner/ gross room technician at Laboratory Corporation of America (LabCorp), a company which offers diagnostic testing. “A deiner or a gross room technician is just another term for autopsy...
polliwogging n.— «Iowa DNR fisheries technician Adam Thiese found the first Higgins eye within 30 minutes of the opening bell. Using a technique dubbed “polliwogging,” he slipped downstream on his knees, probing the bottom...