valve lash
n.— «If the noise is there whenever the car is running, and not just during acceleration, then it probably is valve tap, more commonly known as “valve lash.”…When you have lash, it means that there’s slop somewhere between the camshaft and the valve train.» —“Make sure tap is not a ping” by Tom Magliozzi, Ray Magliozzi Miami Herald (Florida) Oct. 27, 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...
Chad in Hilliard, Florida, wonders about the expression old as Methuselah, meaning “extremely advanced in years.” The phrase references Methuselah, a figure in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian tradition said to be 969 years old when he...