wobble
n.— «How could WHUR (96.3 FM)—a station that played essentially the same type of music, had the same on-air personalities and didn’t undertake any special audience-building promotions during the spring—surge so far, so fast? WHUR’s ratings increase has all the makings of what radio people like to call a “wobble,” a freakish, one-time aberration caused by Arbitron’s increasingly creaky data-collection methods.» —“Survey Method Questioned as WHUR Surges” by Paul Farhi Washington Post July 25, 2008. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...
Have you ever googled your own name and found someone else who goes by the very same moniker? There’s a word for that: googleganger. Plus, the language of hobbyists and enthusiasts: If you’re a beekeeper, perhaps you call yourself a...