borrow legs
v. phr.— «Opposition demonstrators, comprising students, market women, the employed and the unemployed youths besieged the Government House with sticks in hand, smashed doors and windows and anything that was on their way. They posed such a potent force that the more than 200 policemen on duty in Government House had to “borrow legs.” They sacked government and took over.» —“Bribery: Matters Arising” by Josef Omorotionmwan This Day (Nigeria) Mar. 30, 2005. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Janet in Montgomery, Alabama, reports that a day after she had surgery on her hand, the wound burst open, and a doctor noted that her wound dehisced. She’s used to hearing dehisce used in botany to mean the splitting of a plant structure to...
Amid court-ordered busing in the 1970s, a middle-school teacher tried to distract her nervous students on the first day of class with this strange assignment: find a monarch caterpillar. The result? A memorable lesson in the miracle of metamorphosis...