golden gut n.— «The job of a network executive has never been easy. Picking a hit is a tall order even for someone with what the industry likes to call a “golden gut”—a knack for sniffing out what’s likely to sell.» —“NBC...
exit guide n.— «After a multistate investigation, four network members—“exit guides,” they call themselves—have been arrested and charged with helping 58-year-old John Celmer of Cumming commit suicide last June.» —“Time to pull...
frostback n.— «Have a feature in today’s Toronto Star on all the “frostbacks” on the January press tour.… Frostbacks is an expression I’d never heard of until Star TV columnist Rob Salem spelled it out for me last...
Grant has the latest headlines from the world of language, including the debate over the name of the home of the 2008 Summer Olympics. Is Beijing pronounced bay-JING or bay-ZHING? Also, a recent court decision concerning an offense that’s...
pancake people n.pl.— «But today, I see within us all (myself included) the replacement of complex inner density with a new kind of self-evolving under the pressure of information overload and the technology of the “instantly...
bah-see zhan n.— «In just a few years, a vibrant, competitive and largely self-contained economy had materialized around the bus stop, or bah-see zhan, an economy that employed at least 200 people, all of them bound to one another in a...