morem pellis hispidus distentione nervorum

[Arthur Peabody]

'Soon afterward, Zerwas came to the microphone and stood there, giving
Cain what Jonathan Tilove, in his blog for the Austin American-Statesman,
jokingly called the "morem pellis hispidus distentione nervorum": the
hairy eyeball.'
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/07/10/americas-future-is-texas

I get 'manner' ('mos' accusative), skin (nominative), rough
(nominative), 'in a swelling' ('distentio' ablative - of fudge - never
remembered all those ablative constructions), 'of nerves' (nervus,
genitive plural). 'mos' is accusative because an omitted transitive
verb or an idiomatic construction I've forgotten - I suspect the
latter. 'Skin rough in the manner of a swelling of nerves'? 'His
skin prickled from nerves'? I looked up accusative
of manner but see it only in Greek. I can't get anything like 'hairy
eyeball', which has now made it to Google Translate.

 

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

Having looked up the blog, I think Tilove is trying to be cute. (Warning to those writers whose pretensions outstrip their talents and critical faculties: this is unlikely to be a good tactic.) He remembers that Esau is a hairy man, so he's found Qui prior egressus est, rufus erat, et totus in morem pellis hispidus in the Vulgate, and banged it together with something he's probably found in a Latin medical text referring to the eye. It doesn't work, unsurprisingly.

 

[Arthur Peabody]

You remind me of Alan Bennett's sermon on Genesis 27:11, 'Esau my brother is an [sic]
hairy man, and I am a smooth man', available on Youtube,

 

[Bestiola]

"distentio nervorum" can also mean "a spasm", however, it's highly unlikely that the author was intentionally implying that Zerwas is being spasmodically hairy.