Official Dictionary of Unofficial English-Grant-Barrett-0071458042

derecho

archy, class, and the public sphere emerged. Meanwhile (and most interestingly), Evelyn Nesbit Thaw became “the first person to capitalize on a scandal to become a film star.”

derecho n. a type of strong, ground-level prairie wind caused by rapidly descending cold air and characterized by a straight, horizontal advance. Science. Spanish. United States.

1890 Chicago Daily Tribune (Mar. 30) “Predictions of Tornadoes,” p. 12 ! If genuine tornadoes were not developed, there were violent

squalls or the peculiar storm styled by Prof. Hinrichs the “derecho,” or straight-blow. 1893 Mark W. Harrington L.A. Times (Apr. 16) “Tornadoes: What They Are; Where and When They Occur,” p. 18 ! The third form appears rather as horizontal than as vertical whirls. They appear to be what Dr. Hinrichs has called derechoes (from derecho, straight) and advance in the form of a horizontal roll of dust. The front extends in length as they advance, so that the territory they pass over is fan-shaped, instead of the strap-shaped area of the tornado proper. 1993 Chris Burbach Omaha World-Herald (Neb.) (July 16) “Errant Weather Systems Make Misery” ! On the evening of July 8, cool air made heavy by rain crashed earthward at tremendous speed in central Nebraska, said Pollack, the weather service meteorologist. The descending air touched off a weather phenomenon known as a derecho, he said. The cool air caused the big winds, Pollack said. After it hit the ground, the air spread out, blowing wind in front of the thunderstorms and causing more thunderstorms. 2004 Hayli Fellwock Bowling Green Daily News (Ky.) (July 14) “Storms, Damage Return” (Int.) ! Tuesday night’s storm was called a “derecho,” the Spanish word for huge wind event, according to Benjamin Schott, meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Louisville. The winds ranged between 60 to 80 mph, Schott said.

descanso n. a roadside marker or memorial to a victim of an automobile accident. Religion. Spanish. United States. [From Spanish descanso ‘resting place (of a dead person),’ from the verb descansar ‘to (have a) rest.’]

1994 Kelly Garbus Kansas City Star Magazine (Kan., Mo.) (Sept. 4) “Roadside Reminders,” p. 8 ! The practice of erecting memorials may have its origins in Mexico. Roadside memorials there are called descanso, which means resting place. 1999 Rod Allee Record (N.J.) (June 18) “Tenuous Bond Links Two Memorials” ! Alongside Interstate 80 in Knowlton Township is something called a descanso, a Spanish word that means a roadside memorial. It is for State Trooper Philip

Lamonaco. 2000 Steve Shoup Albuquerque Journal (N.Mex.) (Aug. 23) “Fiery Crash on I-25 Kills One,” p. A1 ! Williams said one of the cars

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came to rest against a descanso, or roadside cross often put up by family and friends to mark where someone died, usually in a traffic accident. 2002 Elda Silva San Antonio Express-News (Tex.) (Nov. 3) “Americans Find Room for Descansos,” p. 1J ! While a gravesite marks the resting place of physical remains, a descanso is intended to mark the place where the spirit left the body. 2004 Forrest Valdiviez Island Packet (Bluffton, S.C.) (Oct. 17) “Signs of the Cross” (Int.) ! In the Southwest, the markers are called descansos, which comes from the Spanish word for resting. The practice comes from a Spanish tradition of placing stones where pallbearers rested between the church and the cemetery. Later the stones became crosses.... Some states don’t think roadside memorials are sacred. 2005 Rachel Ray Albuquerque Journal (N.Mex.) (June 12) “Historian, Photographer Track New Mexico’s Tradition of Roadside Crosses” (Int.) ! [Kathleen] McRee and oral historian Troy Fernandez, both Santa Feans, have spent years researching, photographing and interviewing people about the roadside crosses known variously around New Mexico as descansos, crucitas or memorias.

deve n. a coerced payment; “protection” money. Crime & Prisons. Money & Finance. Nigeria. Slang. [development levy.] Jocular reference to actual levies made by the government for growth and development.

2003 (All Africa) (Aug. 19) “Displaced Residents Flee Warri” (in Warri, Nigeria) ! Motorists, shop owners and commuters were subjected to varied harrowing experiences during which victims lost money, wares to youths who terrorised the area, demanding all manner of fees tagged development levy, otherwise called “deve.” 2003 Onyema Ugochukwu @ Nigeria (All Africa) (Sept. 29) “NDDC Is Reconstructing the Destruction of 50 Years—Chairman” ! There is something now, they call it “deve,” that is development levy. It has become so bad these days they even charge on the basis of blocks and that is what we face. (That is, if a construction is to be embarked upon, the people would, in a manner of quantity surveying, collect commission per number of blocks to be used for the project.) 2003 Barry Morgan @ Port Harcourt, Nigeria (Upstream) (Oct. 17) “Oil Stoking Fires of Ethnic Rivalry” ! Onyema Ugochukwu says that after 33 months of operation, 405 projects have been completed despite the emergence of what is dubbed “deve”—an unofficial development levy charged on-site by local communities on contractor’s construction materials even though projects are meant for their benefit. 2004 Bobson Gbinije Daily Champion (Lagos, Nigeria) (May 20) “Killing the Renaissance in Delta State” (Int.) ! The word deve is a neologistic infusion and shortened form of “Development Levy.”

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D-girl n. a (junior) film industry executive who considers scripts for further development into funded movie productions. Entertainment.

1987 Anna McDonnell L.A. Times (Aug. 23) “D-Girls: The Women Behind the Scripts,” p. 18 ! “D-girl” is the movie industry sobriquet for a woman who works in the murky world of “development.” Men dominate most of the power jobs in the industry—directing, producing, running studios—but women reign supreme in the Big D, development.... There are probably about 100 D-girls in Hollywood. Perhaps a fourth are really young men, but women are so prevalent in development that even the men often are referred to as “D-girls”— and even appear that way on many agency lists. 1995 Usenet: alt.showbiz.gossip (Jan. 6) “Re: Liking Demi Moore” ! Demi’s “production company” is simply a vanity shell deal at Columbia Pictures. All the above-the-title actors have them to soothe their egos. Essentially, the studio gives them a few hundred thou to pay a D-girl or D-boy to “develop” scripts for them. 2004 Ms. Gonick San Francisco Chronicle

(Calif.) (Sept. 3) “Running Down Lunacy Lane with a D-Girl” (Int.)

! The idea came from Kitty, a D-girl (or, in wicked Hooeywood parlance, “Development Slut”) from the TV division of Genius Nerd Films.

dhimmi n. a non-Muslim living with limited rights under Muslim rule. Arabic. Religion.

1929 C.H. Kraeling Journal of the American Oriental Society “The Origin and Antiquity of the Mandeans,” vol. 49, p. 199 (Int.) ! The Moslem rulers classed the Mandeans with those called “dhimmi,” i.e., the ones with whom a compact for religious toleration had been made.... The Koran mentions three groups of dhimmi, the Jews, the Christians and the Sabiun or the Sabeans, not to be confused with the Sabean family of the Semitic peoples. 1942 Arthur Jeffery Journal of Near Eastern Studies (Oct.) “The Political Importance of Islam,” vol. 1, no. 4, p. 388 (Int.) ! The offer of Islam or Dhimmi status must be made before the attack is launched. 1955 N.Y. Times (Dec. 30) “Equality Promised North Africa Jews,” p. 14 ! Jews had held the status of “dhimmis” since the twelfth century. “Dhimmi” means a protected person without the rights of a citizen. He could not vote, get a passport or have his oath accepted in a Moroccan law court. 1982 David B. Ottaway @ Kfar Matta, Lebanon Washington Post (Nov. 29) “Uneasy Peace Prevails in Village for Lebanese Christians, Druze,” p. A18

! Lebanese Forces officials say they are only trying to establish a balance of power between Christians and Druze and end what they allege is the Christian status as dhimmi, second-class citizens, in the Chouf. 1996 Bernard Lewis The Middle East, p. 210 ! Tolerated

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unbelievers were called dhimmi, or ahl al-dhimma, “the people of the pact.” This was a legal term for the tolerated and protected non-Mus- lim subjects of the Muslim state.... The dhimma, which determined their status, was conceived as a pact between the Muslim ruler and the non-Muslim communities and was thus essentially a contract. The basis of this contract was the recognition by the dhimmis of the supremacy of Islam and the dominance of the Muslim state, and their acceptance of a position of subordination, symbolized by certain social restrictions and by the payment of a poll tax (jizya) to which Muslims were not subject. In return, they were granted security of life and property, protection against external enemies, freedom of worship, and a very large measure of internal autonomy in the conduct of their affairs. 2004 Val McQueen Tech Central Station (Washington, D.C.) (Oct. 12) “You Only Die Once” (Int.) ! Even the colorless—and clueless—dhimmi-in-chief also known as British Foreign Minister Jack Straw raced off to visit the family—to what purpose, who knows?

ding-ding n. a streetcar or trolley. Hong Kong. [Imitative of the sound of a bell.] Although this term is specific to Hong Kong, in Japan streetcars are sometimes called chin chin densha, meaning ‘ding ding trains.’

2001 Verna Yu Townsville Bulletin/Townsville Sun (Australia) (Jan. 27) “Ding-Dings Face the Chop,” p. 55 ! The wooden double-decker “ding-ding,” so nicknamed for its clanging bell, is to make way for a new generation of streamlined aluminum models, which Hongkong Tramways Ltd says will be safer, faster and more comfortable. 2005

Bianca Tong @ Hong Kong Imprint (Univ. of Waterloo, Can.) (July 15) “Luxury, Rain and Ding-Dings in Hong Kong” (Int.) ! Serviced by an amazingly efficient public transportation system, people have access to streetcars (affectionately called “ding-dings”), subways, trains, buses, and ferries.

dipping n. rocking or bouncing a vehicle by alternately hitting the gas and brakes or by quickly adjusting a hydraulic suspension.

Automotive.

1995 Usenet: rec.music.hip-hop

(Sept. 14) “Totally Unofficial Rap-

Dictionary (Bi-weekly Posting, Part 1/2)” ! Dipping is what a car with a hydraulic suspension does. 2004 Shaheem Reid MTVNews.com

(Nov. 8) “Hyphy: Crunk, Northern-California Style” (Int.) ! One popular example of kids acting hyphy or “going dumb” is “gas-brake dip-

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pin’.” In the Bay, they pile into their cars and, instead of driving normally, they’ll hit the gas, then quickly hit the brake; hit the gas, hit the brake; hit the gas, hit the brake. And when they really want to get into it, they open all the doors on the vehicle, turn the music to its loudest possible volume and.... You guessed it: Hit the gas, hit the brake. 2005 Harry Harris, Laura Casey Oakland Tribune (Calif.)

(Feb. 7) “Future Father Is Shot to Death” (Int.) ! According to Green, some of Baeza’s passengers said the other van was “dipping,” a street term meaning the driver would “hit the gas, then brake, then swerve to make it rock.” 2005 Louis Sahagun @ Oakland, Calif. L.A. Times (Mar. 7) “Deadly Swerves and Spins” (Int.) ! Maneuvers include sidin’—another term for doughnuts—and dippin’, in which a driver hits the brakes and the gas to make a car rock back and forth in time to, say, Tupac Shakur’s “Starin’ in My Rearview” or Mac Dre’s “Thizzelle Dance,” a slang reference to Ecstasy. 2005 Harry Harris, Laura Casey @ Oakland Argus (Calif.) (Aug. 9) “Man Captured, Admits Killing Father-to-Be in February” (Int.) ! Baeza’s passengers said Gonzalez’s van, which was alongside theirs, was “dipping,” a street term for a driver hitting the gas then braking and swerving to make it rock.

dirt y dirt y n. the southern United States; the South. Also durrt y durrt y. Hip-Hop. Music. United States. [From “Dirty Dirty South,” heavily influenced by a trend of southern hip-hop music called “Dirty South.” The spelling durrty is closely associated with hiphop music.] Usually used with the definite article: the dirt y dirt y. Capitalization is inconsistent.

1999 Rob Sheffield @ Charlottesville, Va. Village Voice (NYC) (Mar. 2) “Top 10 Plus,” p. 82 ! OutKast are so weird I gave up on getting a handle on Aquemini, which is when it started bubbling in my brain. I love how they represent the dirty-dirty with more juice than Zeus, rocking the ill mbira and letting Erykah Badu shake that load off with trunkloads of booty-club bass. 1999 Usenet: alt.rap (Apr. 9) “Betta Who? Betta Wha?” ! Banned in 47 Countries baby from the Dirty Dirty, to your Uranus. 2001 Business Wire (Oct. 11) “Loud Records Gears Up for Southern Compilation” (in NYC) ! Loud Records will be releasing Hypnotize Minds Presents...The Dirty Dirty Volume 1 January 15, 2002, a compilation of some of the South’s hottest records.

2003 Liz Balmaseda Miami Herald (Fla.) (Feb. 9) “A New Breed: Miami Rapper Pitbull Has All of South Florida Barking About His Skills,” p. F1 ! “I’m from the Dirty Dirty...,” goes one of Pitbull’s most contagious raps, “Dirty.” 2004 Ace Atkins Dirty South (Mar. 2), p. 227 ! “People like to talk and divide us. People like to break us apart. But we all the Dirty South.” “Dirty, dirty.” *2004 [Marvulus]

Trickology (Oct. 10) “The Reunion: Where Do You Live?” (Int.) ! New

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York, cuz while I’d love to hit up the durrty durrty, I won’t be able to...depends when I guess.

discordant couple n. a pair of long-term sexual partners, such as a married couple, in which one is infected with a sexually transmitted disease and the other is not. Health. Jargon. Medical.

1990 (USA Today/Gannett Nat. Info. Network) (Apr. 22) “Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report” in Usenet: sci.med.aids (Apr. 24, 1990) (David Canzi) “HICN 314 News—Excerpts” ! The physician who performed the inseminations reported that in January 1990 a second HIV-1-discordant couple (i.e., seropositive husband with hemophilia, seronegative wife) underwent one insemination using the same density gradient centrifugation procedure. Nine weeks after the insemination, the woman was negative for HIV-1 antibody by EIA and Western blot and for proviral HIV-1 DNA by polymerase chain reaction. 1990 Kay Longcope Boston Globe (Mass.) (Aug. 23) “AIDS Threat to Women Increasing” ! Jim, 31, says he and his wife, June, are “a discordant couple,” meaning that one is infected with the AIDS virus and the other isn’t. 2004 [Big Issue Writer] East African Standard

(Nairobi, Kenya) (July 26) “Aids Spread Relief” (Int.) ! In the discordant couple phenomenon, one partner is HIV-positive, while the other remains negative, even as they continue to live together as man and wife or simply maintain a long-term relations.

DNF adj. 1. did not finish, in course-based sporting events, such as boating, auto-racing, and horse racing. 2. did not find, in geocaching. Acronym. Jargon. Sports.

1943 James Robbins N.Y. Times (July 29) “Race Week Starts at Larchmont Y.C.,” p. 15 ! [boat-racing scores:] D.G. Millar, d.n.f. 1978

Globe and Mail (Toronto, Can.) (Aug. 30) “Winds Helpful to U.S. Sailor in CORK Event,” p. P31 ! The worst finish has been dropped in computing the standing in classes that have completed five or more races: dns—did not start; pms—premature start; dnc—did not compete; dnf—did not finish. 2004 Parker Morse Flashes of Panic (May 2) “Community Watch” (Int.) ! There is—or was—a cache there called “Valley View Too” which hadn’t been found since last May, though with only one “Did Not Find” logged since then. (Curiously, the caching slang for a failed search, “DNF,” is the same as the runners’ slang for a failed race, where it indicates “Did Not Finish.”)

dog n. in horse racing, a cone or barrier for delimiting a path. Sports. United States.

1962 Walter Haight Washington Post, Times Herald (Nov. 15) “About Horses and People...,” p. D12 ! Race track “dogs” (or the equivalent

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thereof ) could have been a factor in the International victory of France’s Match II.... They’re in the category of the carpenter’s “Horse.”...A few feet of two-by-four with four legs attached.... The removal of two legs, from one end, turns a horse into a dog. The wooden dogs, often seen in guarding a street excavation and holding a red light at night, once were stock equipment at all race tracks....

Most have been replaced by the inverted yellow traffic cones. Dogs or cones are placed several feet out from the inside rail at times when a track is wet, so that this part of the racing strip will be protected during morning workout hours. 1986 Bob Schwarzmann @ Renton Seattle Times (Wash.) (May 4) “If Problems Surface, Coffey Can Help Smooth Them Out,” p. C11 ! Coffey said Coble had been reluctant to use “dogs” because he felt the horsemen would not accept them. “Dogs” are barriers—flame-orange traffic cones in this case—to keep the hoofs away from an area of concern. 2004 David Grening @ Elmont, N.Y. MSNBC (Oct. 15) “Badge of Silver Debuts for Frankel” (Int.) ! Exercise rider Emanuel Davy never asked her for anything during the work, conducted around a triple set of orange traffic cones, commonly referred to as dogs.

dog-whistle politics n. a concealed, coded, or unstated idea, usually divisive or politically dangerous, nevertheless understood by the intended voters. Also dog whistle issue. Australia. New Zealand. Politics. United Kingdom. [Despite the information in the first 2000 citation, this term probably originated in Australia or New Zealand, though it could be derived from the dog whistle effect in American polling, which is the ability of survey participants to distinguish a difference in questions where a pollster may not have intended one. The credit for the coinage in the 2005 cite is unproven though possible, since Lynton Crosby ran four election campaigns for Australian Prime Minister John Howard; Crosby certainly introduced the term in the U.K.] A dog whistle is often used as a figurative device for something that cannot be heard or understood by everyone, or that surreptitiously compels people to come along.

1997 Dominion (New Zealand) (Dec. 16) “Election Fight on Race Issue,” p. 8 ! Labor’s spokesman on aboriginal affairs has already accused Mr. Howard of “dog-whistle politics”—in rejecting a race election, he actually sent a high-pitched signal to those attuned to hear it. 2000 Tony Wright The Age (Australia) (Apr. 8) “The Dog Whistler” ! The Americans call this “dog-whistle politics.” Blow a dog whistle, and you won’t hear much to get excited about. But the target of the whistle...the dogs—will detect a sound beyond the audible

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range of the rest of us, and will react to it. Two quite different messages are contained within the one action of blowing the whistle: the one benign, the other designed to be heard and heeded only by the ears tuned to it. 2000 Dennis Atkins Courier Mail (Brisbane, Australia) (Apr. 10) “Driving a Wedge to Win,” p. 13 ! A simple statement such as “I don’t like political correctness” might not sound too threatening but there are some who hear something quite different, such as “It’s okay to be racist.” When the politician who used the original words is challenged for inciting racism, he or she is able to say, “No, all I said was I’m against political correctness, what’s wrong with that?” A number of people last week hotly disputed that wedge and dog-whis- tle politics are played in Australia. Don’t believe them. That’s just spin. 2002 Shaun Carney The Age (7) (Nov. 2) “Closer to Asia Than You Think” ! The message from the Howard Government in its early days was that Australia was not part of Asia and never would be. To a considerable degree, it was part of a dog-whistle campaign by the Coalition. At a time when rural voters and elements of blue-collar Australia were rallying around Pauline Hanson’s simplified nostrums for dealing with what she portrayed as the Asianisation of the nation (and the featherbedding of Aborigines), Howard was, with some fanfare, cutting back immigration numbers. 2005 Jonathan Freedland

Guardian (U.K.) (Apr. 12) “Beware the Nasty Nudge and Wink” (Int.)

! Every election introduces a new phrase into the political lexicon and the “dog-whistle issue” is 2005’s early contribution. Coined by Lynton Crosby, the strategic guru imported from Australia by Michael Howard, it refers to those policies that summon back voters who have gone astray.

doji n. a stock-trading session in which the opening and closing prices are (nearly) the same. Japanese. Jargon. Money & Finance.

[From the Japanese doji ‘a blunder; a blunderer; a fool or foolish thing.’] The plural is also doji.

1993 David Toole Toronto Star (Can.) (Mar. 21) “Technical Analysis Within Reach of Average Investor,” p. H3 ! In no time you’ll be looking at your candlestick charts (which are based on an ancient Japanese system developed to analyze rice contracts) and looking for exotic price patterns like “morning star,” “dark cloud cover” and “dragon-fly doji.” 1994 Nigel Cope Independent (U.K.) (Jan. 4) “Pembroke: Careless Underground Leak Blows Murdoch’s Cover” ! Instead, it concerns an arcane 17th-century Japanese method of mastering the markets via a system of “harmi line patterns,” “doji line candles” and “dark cloud corners.” 2004 Rick Pendergraft Schaeffer’s Research (Dec. 6) “Shooting Stars Are Not Always Lucky” (Int.) ! When a stock’s opening price and closing price are virtually the same, it is called a “doji” in candle-

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stick parlance. The third stock formed what is known as a “gravestone doji,” which is a type of shooting star.

dollar van n. In New York City and Long Island, privately owned multipassenger vehicles that operate along regular routes. Automotive. NYC. In manner of operation, dollar vans are similar to por puestos in South America, TAP-TAP in Haiti, chapas in Mozambique, and matatus in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Dollar vans sometimes charge more than a dollar. Though once illegal, many are now licensed by the city.

[1993 Newsday (Long Island, N.Y.) (Mar. 15) “Cops, Sanit Worker Rescue 18 from Sinking Vehicles,” p. 18 ! In all, 13 commuters were

pulled from the rented Dollar van—12 passengers between the ages of 15 and 65 years and a 7-month-old girl.] 1993 Russell Ben-Ali News-

day (Long Island, N.Y.) (Dec. 20) “Van Hits Queens Boy Leaving Church,” p. 32 ! “Witnesses told us it was a dollar van,” said one officer, referring to one of the privately owned livery vans that carry passengers along Linden Boulevard for a $1 fare. 1995 Gary Dauphin

Village Voice (NYC) (Nov. 21) “The Show: Sometimes the Audience Produces More Entertainment Than the Plot Line,” p. 10 ! You really did have to drive, and so although it was certainly always possible to go to Sunrise via bus, train, or dollar-van, the thought that one might actually take those public transportations to get there was usually the first and last thought before announcing “fuck it” and “I’m not going.” 2002 Jaira Placide Fresh Girl (Jan. 8), p. 162 ! We ask directions from a man with a long beard who’s selling oils and incense. He tells us the dollar vans would be the fastest way. The van we get is packed with four rows of people and their bags of presents. 2004

Sewell Chan @ NYC N.Y. Times (Dec. 21) “City Sets Talks After Strike Is Approved at 2 Private Bus Lines” (Int.) ! Officials have arranged for licensed commuter vans, also known as dollar vans, to operate limited service along the affected routes if a strike occurs.

do-me queen n. a selfish, submissive sexual partner, especially in a male homosexual relationship. Sexuality. Slang.

1994 Usenet: alt.sex.bondage (Oct. 25) “Re: *** The End of Alt.Sex

.Bondage?” ! That would be as rude and abusive as if i had followed up your post asking why rob didn’t go create alt.sex.bondage—only for you to go play in and called you a lazy, snide, self-centered do-me queen bottom. 1996 W.A. Henkin Consensual Sadomasochism

(Sept. 1), p. 65 ! Do-me queen—a bottom whose sole interest is in

receiving physical, sexual, and/or emotional attention, and does not give back to the Top. 2003

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Woman’s Life and Journey into BDSM (Nov. 30) p. 45 ! Steven,...While i won’t deny that i intensely enjoy the “do-me-queen” aspect, it is the pleasing & serving that I enjoy more.... sharon.

doona day n. a day taken off from work for relaxation or idleness. Australia. [Doona is a trademarked brand in Australia now well on its way to becoming a generic term there for any duvet or down quilt.] As indicated in the citations, synonyms include mental health day, duvet day, sickie (in Australia), and the uncommon eiderdown day.

2001 David Wilkes Courier Mail (Queensland, Australia) (Jan. 9) “Doona Day, the Official ‘Sickie,’ ” p. 8 ! After a heavy night out, or if you just can’t face getting out of bed, you would be allowed to call in to say you were taking a Doona Day. 2004 Robyn Pearce Getting a Grip on Leadership (Aug. 31), p. 250 ! What about giving yourself a duvet day, eiderdown day, doona day, mental health day...—a delicious and luxurious day in bed, reading, resting by yourself.

2005 Christina Larmer Sunday Telegraph (Australia) (May 8) “Doona Days” (Int.) ! You can dress it up however you like—sick leave, mental health day or, as it’s known in particularly innovative companies, doona day—but a growing band of organisational experts say taking regular time off makes for a happy, healthy and productive worker.

door buster n. a discounted item of limited quantity intended to bring customers into a store; a sale of such items; a loss-leader.

Also attrib. Advertising. Business.

1935 Hammond Times (Ind.) (Aug. 14), p. 9 ! This is the final cleanup of $4, $5 and $6 dresses, including many dark shades for fall wear. A real door buster. We warn you, come at 9:30! 1958 Syracuse Herald Journal (N.Y.) (Apr. 18), p. 13 ! Door Buster. Sale! Bamboo cafe curtains! 88¢ pr. 1986 (PR Newswire) (Sept. 2) “Chrysler’s 2.4% Loan Program a ‘Real Blockbuster’ ” (in Detroit, Mich.) ! Chrysler Motors’ 2.4 annual percentage rate financing is a REAL blockbuster. And it’s a door buster, too, according to reports from Chrysler/Plymouth and Dodge dealers nationwide. “We almost couldn’t handle the traffic,” said one dealer from Houston. “We had the highest traffic counts in months.” 1992 Usenet: rec.scuba (Dec. 11) “Re: Need Tanks” ! A shop here in SLO had some for $250 new, but I think that was some sort of “door buster” special. 2004 Lauren Foster @ NYC

Financial Times (U.K.) (Nov. 27) “Stores Open Doors to Bargain Hunters” (Int.) ! Retailers such as Wal-Mart and Sears, Roebuck opened at 6am yesterday to promote their “early bird” specials, also known as “door-buster” sales.

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