quockerwodger

English edit

quockerwodger (plural quockerwodgers)

A wooden toy figure that jerks its limbs when a string is pulled.
- 1924, Walter Julius Bloem, The Soul of the Moving Picture, page 36:
  Just hand the old quockerwodger over to me! I'll cut him in half and each part will dance on the rope just as comically as you please!
- 1969, Donald Barr Chidsey, The War in the South, page 37:
  Lee was a scarecrow, cantankerous, acidulous, arrogant, breathlessly ugly, as jerky as a quockerwodger, but he knew more about the art of war, as it was breathlessly called, than anybody else in America […]
(figurative, by extension) A puppet; a person whose actions are controlled by somebody else.
- 1944, Morris Allison Bealle, Washington Squirrel Cage, page 9:
  They felt that the fellow was a quockerwodger rather than a politician, an againster rather than a true American, an oppositionist in fundamental things rather than a sincere patriot.