Double-Tongued Dictionary Recent Citations

Citation Queue These are recently added citations for catchwords that have not yet been researched or incorporated into a full dictionary entry. There is also a date-sorted archive which includes all citations, whether used in a full entry or not, as well as the full entries themselves.

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night lunch n. As our lovely little girl, Anna, came early, we had to spend a few extra weeks in the hospital with her. My wife and I learned a few things.…There’s a mystical fourth meal around 9pm called “night lunch.“ (Aug. 18, 2008) [full citation…]

mudjacking n. The repairs to Sprigg Street have included removing fill material put in place to raise the roadbed following the Great Flood of 1993, material that had deteriorated badly, Gramling said. “It was just kind of a mud instead of soil,“ Gramling said. “It looked like it was acting more like a sponge than a support for the pavement.“…The cost of the work to be done next week won’t be known until the contractor is able to make the test drillings, Gramling said. The city pays on a per-truckload basis for the process known as mudjacking. (Aug. 17, 2008) [full citation…]

skeet-shooting n. A special technique, known as “skeet-shooting,“ was developed by controllers to cancel out the high speed of the moon relative to Cassini and also help obtain ultra-sharp views as the spacecraft sped past the icy moon at 64,000 kilometers per hour (40,000 miles per hour) on August 11. “Knowing exactly where to point, at just the right time, was critical to this event,“ said Paul Helfenstein, Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY., who developed and used the skeet-shoot technique to design the image sequence. “The challenge is equivalent to trying to capture a sharp, unsmeared picture of a distant roadside billboard with a telephoto lens out the window of a speeding car.“ (Aug. 17, 2008) [full citation…]

permabear n. Then there was the espouser of doom himself: Roubini was known to be a perpetual pessimist, what economists call a “permabear.” When the economist Anirvan Banerji delivered his response to Roubini’s talk, he noted that Roubini’s predictions did not make use of mathematical models and dismissed his hunches as those of a career naysayer. (Aug. 17, 2008) [full citation…]

DFD-er n. The trip to Rockaway Beach involves riding the A train over a different sort of New York landmark: Jamaica Bay. At the 116th Street stop is a busy area with delis and beach shops and, where 116th Street meets the ocean, an open-air establishment called the Sand Bar where a mix of locals and DFD-ers (local shorthand meaning “down for the day”) drink at the bar or at picnic tables overlooking the boardwalk. (Aug. 15, 2008) [full citation…]

dropout factory n. Tonia Causey-Bush, a district administrator, said districts with significant dropout numbers are often called “dropout factories,“ but that’s an incorrect label for Rialto Unified. (Aug. 15, 2008) [full citation…]

slotting n. The dynamic of these negotiations is interesting. On the one side, you have the Pirates, who have traditionally adhered to recommended bonuses, a practice known as slotting. Handing out bonuses over slot hasn’t been the norm for the organization, but they have also tended to draft players considered to have signability issues. (Aug. 15, 2008) [full citation…]

hydromowing n. The local agencies use three approaches to curbing fire threat—prescribed burning, hand thinning and a relatively new practice known as hydromowing, where a large spinning drum with carbide teeth shreds small trees and brush. (Aug. 15, 2008) [full citation…]

suicide gown n. Across the way, about a dozen inmates are engaged in a “socialization” exercise. Some participants are chained to benches—“for civilian workers” safety,“ as Hong explains it. Others sit listlessly at tables, in long draping ponchos that deputies refer to as “suicide gowns.“ (Aug. 15, 2008) [full citation…]

block booking n. As Ladd explained in Blockbuster, Star Wars got into the theaters because of a now illegal practice called “block booking,“ which involved studios essentially holding a big movie hostage in exchange for theaters agreeing to play one of the studio’s smaller films. Fox told theater owners if they wanted “The Other Side of Midnight,“ a potboiler based on the Sidney Sheldon bestseller, they had to show this little movie “Star Wars” too. (Aug. 14, 2008) [full citation…]

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