who laid the rail
adv. phr.— «For all those years I have been loaded for bear with lectures of all sorts and sizes on “Who laid the Rail” to “What the Wild Western Waves are Saying.”» —“Tom Arter’s Lecture” Macon Telegraph (Georgia) May 19, 1890. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
If you speak a second or third language, you may remember the first time you dreamed in that new tongue. But does this milestone mean you’re actually fluent? And a couple’s dispute over the word regret: Say you wish you’d been able...
Frederick from Valdosta, Georgia, wonders about the term galley-west. To knock something galley-west means to “knock it into confusion” “send everything in all directions.” In Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry...