tom-walkers
n.pl.— «Tom-walkers. Stilts. “We been walking on Tom-walkers to-day.”» —by Harry Harrison Kroll A Comparitive Study of Upper and Lower Southern Folk Speech (George Peabody College for Teachers, Tenn.) Aug., 1925. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
Asthenosphere, a geologist’s term for the molten layer beneath the earth’s crust, sparks a journey that stretches all the way from ancient Greece to the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Plus: What the heck is a dogberg? It’s when...
A young caller from the Hudson Valley of New York wonders about his grandmother’s use of stemwinder to praise a speech she thought was excellent. In the early 1800s, people used pocket watches that had to be wound with a tiny key. Once someone...