Yankee dime
n.— «When the boys and girls husked corn together and the boys hustled like the very mischief to get the first red ear—wonder why?—and then attended the girls home from these husking bees and night singings, bidding them good-night in the moonlight at the front gate and going home with a bran[d]-new Yankee dime, feeling prouder and more independent than any of the present generation.» —“A Great Day at Troutman’s” The Landmark (Statesville, N.C.) Aug. 28, 1900. (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...
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