top and tail
v.— «The big surprise at the moment is the success of Seven’s The World Around Us on Sunday nights hosted by Lisa McCune. It’s really “topped and tailed” in TV parlance. She just reads some scripts in a studio in front of a flat that can take a digital graphic. An editor and producer “tops and tails” the segments and intros and the end. And off it goes to rate between 1.2 million and 1.6 million viewers on Sunday night.» —“TV shock—original programming works” by Terry O’Dial Crikey (Australia) May 26, 2004. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A Kentucky listener says her father often prefaced statements with the phrase I tell you what’s the truth. This regionalism appears in the Dictionary of Southern Appalachian English (Bookshop|Amazon). A shorter version is I’ll tell you...
In the 15th century, the word respair meant “to have hope again.” Although this word fell out of use, it’s among dozens collected in a new book of soothing vocabulary for troubled times. Plus, baseball slang: If a batter...