couch homelessness n.— «While there’s not a lot of pure homelessness in the Valley, there are a lot of people suffering what’s called “couch homelessness.”…Those are the people who can’t afford a place of their own, so they’re stuck living with...
valley of death n.— «Several speakers referred to the difficulty in getting an innovation from the idea stage to the commercial stage, a gap referred to as the “valley of death.” Andrew Dearing, secretary general of the European Industrial Research...
valley fill n.— «Mountaintop removal is just what the name suggests. Peaks are cleared of trees. Giant steam shovels then scrape away the topsoil. The rock beneath is blasted away until the coal is exposed. Some blasts have lopped as much as 800...
frozen chicken head n.— «The mountain is empty, nearly. The shadows are lengthening, and the valley lies in darkness 2000 ft. below. The snow is hardening into icy chunks beneath our skis. “Frozen chicken heads,” Dave Monte calls them.» —“Alpine...
ghost kid n.— «The thing that scares me most as a superintendent, as a person, as a professional educator, are kids that are called ghost kids, kids that walk around our schools and don’t have any attachments or association with anybody. I don’t...
take a haircut v. phr.— «The intent of such sessions is to identify what creditors will settle for. “But there was no goal seeking,…other than that everyone wanted 100 cents on the dollar. I think that nobody wanted to accept their fate, which was...