skylab
n.— «With my eyes closed, I could still feel the dust on my face as the “skylab” roared through the scabrous path and past the verdant groves. “Skylab” was the name the villagers had given the puny motorbike that could seat six people—one person in front of the driver, two behind him and two on each side of the horizontal slab of wood tied tightly to its rear like an outrigger.» —“Philippines indigenous peoples threatened” by May Primera NATIVE-L Aug. 11, 1992. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A hundred years ago, suffragists lobbied to win women the right to vote. Linguistically speaking, though, suffrage isn’t about “suffering.” It’s from a Latin word that involves voting. Plus: military cadences often include...
Acclaimed Jamaican poet Safiya Sinclair’s sumptuous memoir, How to Say Babylon (Bookshop|Amazon) tells the story of her struggle to break free from a rigid Rastafarian upbringing, and how her discovery of poetry, both memorizing it and writing...