banana skin
n.— «Italy are a good side—they won two games in the Six Nations and pushed Ireland in the warm-ups and most of them have beaten Scotland before. This, therefore, is not a “banana skin”; it’s what the French call a seizième-final, the round before the last eight, rather like the match we won against Fiji, 22-20, in Sydney in 2003.» —“Sportblog: Five things the Scots must get right” by Gregor Townsend Guardian Unlimited (United Kingdom) Sept. 29, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
Katie in Everett, Washington, is curious about the expression If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no need for tinkers. What is a tinker? She heard this phrase on the television series The Gilded Age, in response to a character who...