useless canister
n.— «King of Foxrock was third in a maiden hurdle, Alcapone second in a conditions chase, Skibb third in a beginners’ chase and Gimli’s Axe 14th in a novice hurdle. A battle Axe, it was not. In a vernacular unique to the area an animal like that might be described as a “useless canister” or a “scrubbing brush”; for its jockey, it can be a ticket to casualty and if there is one time in the entire year when you do not want to take a fall it is now.» —“Geraghty polishes his Moscow jewel” by Tom English Scotsman (Glasgow, Scotland) Mar. 13, 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...
Cat hair may be something you brush off, but cat hair is also a slang term that means “money.” In the same way, cat beer isn’t alcoholic — some people use cat beer as a joking term for “milk.” And imagine walking on a...