man-riding
n.— «On Wednesday, the Douglas County sheriff’s office said the two men were secured in a bucket being cabled up 500 to 800 feet when the cable failed, sending the men and the bucket to the ground. The men were in a device that was being hoisted by a wire rope and pulley system rigged to the tower, said sheriff’s Lt. Kari Wempe. Wilcox said the descriptions of the accident he had seen were too sketchy to get a clear sense of how the equipment was rigged. But he said it appeared to resemble a practice called “man-riding.” That system is often used for large or long-term tower projects, he said, because it can take several days just to install the elevator-like device.» —“Deaths of two area men point up danger of working on towers” by Benita Y. Williams Kansas City Star (Kansas-Missouri) July 11, 2007. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Mark in Bismarck, North Dakota, spent years as a sailor, and wonders about the term sea painter, meaning “a rope attached to a lifeboat.” Why painter? The word may derive from Middle French pendeur meaning “a kind of rope that...
Fans of the popular British baking show know that you don’t want your many-layered cake to concertina, or “collapse like an accordion.” The verb concertina, in this sense, derives from the name of an accordion-like instrument. This...