alligatoring
n.— «On the second floor, flames had corrugated the banister into what looked like charcoal briquettes, a phenomenon known in firefighter parlance as “alligatoring,” because of its resemblance to a reptile’s bumpy back. The marshals got to the ground floor, where the fire had been hottest and raged the longest. Every step of the stairwell and each railing and inch of banister was alligatored.» —“Working Backward and Seeking Reasons in the Ashes” by Cara Buckley New York Times Mar. 10, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
As we’ve previously discussed, firefighters don and dofftheir equipment, terms deriving from do on and do off. They are also said to dout a fire, meaning they “extinguish” it, dout being a similar shortening of do out. This is part...
Carl in Sebastopol, California, was reminded of his childhood on New York’s Lower East Side while ready Harry Golden’s book For 2 Cents Plain (Amazon), the title referring to how customers ordered a plain glass of seltzer. For a little...