monkey board
n.— «He pursued the poling system down Ludgate-hill, and there he came so close that the pole struck complainant’s legs, knocked him off the “monkey board,” or conductor’s stand, and while he was lying on the the ground bawled out that it served him right.» —in Guildhall London Times Sept. 23, 1836. (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...
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