riggwelted
adj.— «When once asked by a government official how teachers were adapting to the latest set of changes to the national curriculum, he said he thought they were “fair riggwelted.” That, as one small boy explained to him on a school inspection, is when the “yow” is “heavy pregnant, so heavy you see, she falls over on her back and just can’t move. She’s helpless. Sticks her legs in t’air and just can’t shift.”» —“The master storyteller” by Elaine Williams Guardian (U.K.) Apr. 14, 1998. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
A flashlight doesn’t flash. It provides a steady beam of light. So why is it called a flashlight? The earliest versions lit up only briefly before the batteries gave out and required a recharge, so they were literally “flash lights...
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...