landing gear
v. phr.— «He plugs the air line, emergency line and electrical cables from the cab to the trailer, cranks up the “landing gear” that keeps the trailer moored to the ground, rechecks tags to make sure he’s got the right load, locks the trailer with a cobalt lock and checks each of the 18 wheels’ air pressure by listening to the thud when he bangs on it with the rod.» —“Holiday shopping frenzy or not, he keeps on truckin’” by Abigail Goldman Los Angeles Times Dec. 24, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It was a dark and stormy night. So begins the long and increasingly convoluted prose of Edwards Bulwer-Lytton’s best-known novel. Today the annual Bulwer-Lytton Contest asks contestants for fanciful first sentences that are similarly...
Enthusiastic book recommendations! Martha’s savoring the biography of Alexander von Humboldt, the 19th-century explorer, polymath, and naturalist who revolutionized our understanding of nature and predicted the effects of human activity on...