wire-brush treatment
n.— «At 70, still sprints up Pentagon stairways. Senior civilians describe their boss as fierce and demanding; senior military officers describe sessions with him as “the wire-brush treatment.”» —“Rumsfeld’s Search for a Way To Fight a New Type of Foe” by Thom Shanker in Washington, D.C. New York Times Sept. 4, 2002. (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...
When there’s no evening meal planned at home, what do you call that scramble to cobble together your own dinner? Some people apply acronyms like YOYO — “you’re on your own” — or CORN, for “Clean Out your Refrigerator...