tick-tacker
n.— «They were the days of meat pies and trams, of the Flat and the Leger. Tick-tackers. “You could sit on the sidelines and watch forever,” said Bert.» —“How Two Fingers Strode The Turf” by Steve Crawley Sun Herald (Sydney, Australia) May 1, 1988. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
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...
When there’s no evening meal planned at home, what do you call that scramble to cobble together your own dinner? Some people apply acronyms like YOYO — “you’re on your own” — or CORN, for “Clean Out your Refrigerator...