red
n.— «He extended his stop sign, the bus’s red lights started flashing, and its interior lights turned on. As a 10th-grade boy started to cross the road, a silver sports utility vehicle came screaming by. The young man jumped out of the way just in time.…This sort of thing happens all too often. Bus drivers refer to the phenomenon as “running their reds.”… The number of drivers who run reds is likely even worse than statistics suggest.…To make this task easier, officials at Pocono Mountain School District put forms in all its buses, so that drivers can track information on the scofflaws who run reds.» —“Bus drivers seeing red as speeders ignore warning lights” by Dan Berrett Pocono Record (Pennsylvania) Jan. 7, 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...
“What has a head like a cat, feet like a cat, a tail like a cat, but isn’t a cat?” Answer: a kitten! A 1948 children’s joke book has lots of these to share with kids. Plus: an easy explanation for the difference between...