three plastic animals rule
n.— «In 1995, after ACLU sued, Jersey City added a six-foot-high Santa Claus, a three-and-a half-foot-tall Frosty the Snowman, a four-foot-high sleigh, Kwanzaa symbols and a sign explaining that it was celebrating the diverse heritage of the people of Jersey City. This has now come to be called the three plastic animals rule.» —“Eisgruber leads discussion on religious freedom” by Viola Huang in Princeton University Daily Princetonian (Princeton, N.J.) Dec. 14, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Charlotte from Princeton, Kentucky, wonders: What’s the difference between a spider web and a cobweb? There’s a bit of semantic differentiation between the two: A cobweb is usually an old spider web, while a spider web that’s not...