A Navy veteran recalls hearing the Southern expression fat lighter from his wife’s family in Troy, Alabama. It denotes an old, resin-rich pine wood that becomes highly flammable as it ages. Fat lighter is prized as kindling and often called fat...
prairie whale n.—Gloss: a hog. Note: So-called because its fat can be used for things usually done with ambergris. «By the 1840s, whale oil’s dominance in lighting was under sustained attack. Lard oil, boiled from the fat of hogs, or “prairie...