featherwood
n.— «“It’s no different than you guys [who] got the Crips and the Bloods, the ‘cuz’ and all that, and the Mexicans have the Southern and the Northern. So we have the peckerwoods and the featherwoods.”…It is a touchy subject. Especially when you got two or three blacks in your room.…The others ones weren’t tripping on it—just her. Just her, because she is prejudiced.» —by Barbara Ann Owen In the Mix: Struggle and Survival in a Women’s Prison Feb., 1998. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
You may have a favorite word in English, but what about your favorite in another language? The Spanish term ojalá is especially handy for expressing hopefulness and derives from Arabic for “God willing.” In Trinidad, if you want to ask...
Ribbon fall. Gallery forest. You won’t find terms like these in most dictionaries, but they and hundreds like them are discussed by famous writers in the book Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape. The book is an intriguing collection...