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
Jill from Greenville, South Carolina, wants to know why pickle automatically means “pickled cucumber,” as opposed to other pickled vegetables, such as onions and carrots. The answer has to do with prototypicality, the cultural agreement that one...
Advice about college essays from the winner of a top prize for children’s literature: Kelly Barnhill encourages teens to write about experiences that are uniquely their own, from a point of view that is theirs and no one else’s. Plus, why do we say...