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rat line

rat line  n.— «The Bulgarian secret service, which follows KGB orders without question and which had long-established “rat lines” smuggling spies and arms into Italy and Turkey, was the obvious choice.» —“Did Andropov plot...

lily pad

lily pad  n.— «We are already “reconfiguring our footprint”—that is, reviewing deployment of our troops globally to make us capable of applying mobile force anywhere rather than to sit in place to meet any specific threat...

shmen

shmen  n.— «Let us assume that “wench” is a current sexist way of making a masculine or neuter noun apply to women. We can hypothesize that “shwench” is a feminine form of “shmen.” From this...

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