Week in Words

By ERIN MCKEAN

Holding Action

pocket license

Licenses can be transferred from one establishment to another in the same town; a license that is held but not attached to an operational restaurant is referred to as a "pocket license."

The word "pocket" is often used to convey that something is under a particular person's control, as in a "pocket borough" (in the U.K., a borough where the election of representatives was controlled by one person or family) and "pocket veto" (keeping a bill unsigned until the end of a legislative session, so that it can't be dealt with).

Faux for Show

scagliola

Highlights include a 17th-century scagliola table, a technique employing colorful plaster; a lacquered folding screen by Eileen Gray; Carlo Mollino's Surrealist-inspired glass-top table...

Scagliola is a beautiful (and fragile) imitation marble created from powdered gypsum, glue and pigments. Scagliola comes from an Italian word meaning "chip of marble."

Unearthing a Problem

scouring

Federal investigators plan to announce soon that flood-caused erosion along the riverbed—known as scouring—exposed an Exxon Mobil Corp. pipeline on the Yellowstone River in Montana in 2011...

"Floods Put Pipelines at Risk," U.S. News, Dec. 4

Types of scour can include bridge scour, where sediment is removed by the current, leaving "scour holes" and weakening the bridge; strudel scour, where spring-melt runoff from sea ice at shallow depths leads to turbulence that creates depressions in the sea floor; and tidal scour, the erosion caused by the tides, especially in bays.

Fighting Words

Doodles

Re-enacting has brought them closer together, they say. Even as an American, she takes pleasure in mocking her counterpart U.S. re-enactors with calls of "Doodles" or "Pumpkins"—Revolutionary War era slang for U.S. soldiers.

"Pilgrim Re-Enactors Juggle Husbands and Wives, Real and Fake," the Juggle blog, WSJ.com, Nov. 29

The word "doodle" meant "fool," as did "pumpkin"; more complimentary terms for Colonial soldiers were "buckskin" and "blueskin."