Home » Dictionary » sting jet

sting jet

sting jet
 n.— «Dubbed the Sting Jet, it is the source of the most damaging winds that scour Britain in winter, uprooting trees, damaging property and taking lives. The name was inspired by an expression first used by Norwegian meteorologists four decades ago.…They talked of the “poisonous tail of the bent-back weather front.” Prof Keith Browning at the University of Reading and Peter Clark and Tim Hewson of the Met Office have found the sting in the tip of this tail and coined the evocative phrase Sting Jet to describe the extraordinary gales that it spawns.» —“A sting in the tale of the Great Storm” by Roger Highfield Daily Telegraph (U.K.) June 18, 2003. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Further reading

Minor Planets (episode #1639)

There are eight major planets, but more than a million minor ones, including asteroids. If you discover one, you get the honor of naming it. The Dictionary of Minor Planet Names includes minor planets named for rock bands, jazz musicians, poets, and...

All Stove Up After a Day of Hard Work

Ash in Huntsville, Alabama, wonders about the phrase all stove up, which is how his body feels after a long day’s work. It comes from the expression to stave in, meaning “to smash in,” as when something smashes in the staves of a barrel. This...