tombstoning
n.— «It is believed part of Mohamed’s scam involved “tombstoning”—an illegal practice of signing the names of dead or fictitious people to life insurance policies and collecting an advance commission from the insurance company.» —“‘Ace’ Salesman In $8 Mil Sting” by Steve O’Baugh, Bryan Patterson Sun Herald (Australia) June 10, 1990. (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...
The words tough, through, and dough all end in O-U-G-H. So why don’t they rhyme? A lively new book addresses the many quirks of English by explaining the history of words and phrases. And: have you ever been in a situation where a group makes...