Wiktionary
n. 1 short for a bootlegger 2 (context British obsolete English) A man employed by the owners of a canal to push boats through narrow canal tunnels. The legger would lie on his back on a piece of wood on the boat with his feet reaching to the tunnel wall, and walk it along. This could be done by the boat's crew, but the canals employed men specifically for the task because they could do it faster and prevent a tunnel becoming a bottleneck for traffic.
Usage examples of "legger".
Its mouth met the beak of the legger, and there was an exchange of stuff between their mouths.
The most extraordinary was that, as far as he could discern, the legger had no digestive system.
Lane wondered what enabled the legger to stand the great pressure differences between the interior of the tube and the Martian surface.
She proceeded to call out the organs of the legger which corresponded to hers.
On it was a bowl of thick soup, a plate of fried brains, salad of boiled leaves and some unidentifiable vegetables, a plate of ribs with thick dark legger meat, hard-boiled eggs and little loaves of bread.
The legger meat was like wild rabbit, though it was sweeter and had an unidentifiable tang.
And out of the slaughterhouse he would charge into the tube and kill every legger he met, devour the jetfish, drag down the glow-worms from the ceiling, rip them apart, eat them, eat the roots of the trees.
On it was a bowl of thick soup, a plate of fried brains, a salad of boiled leaves and some unidentifiable vegetables, a plate of ribs with thick dark legger meat, hard-boiled eggs, and little loaves of bread.
And out of the slaughterhouse he would charge into the tube and kill every legger he met, devour the jetfish, drag down the glowworms from the ceiling, rip them apart, eat them, eat the roots of the trees.
And here came the Isle of Senana, in the form of a bald Weak Legger as thick and tough as a stump, pale-eyed and ash-skinned, bearing no weapon but a penknife and a sack of quills and scrolls.
She was appalled, good Strong Legger that she was, burner of crafts and carvings, suppressor of arts that harmed no one.
The leggers had come out to inspect their garden because, through some unknown method of detection, they knew that the plantlets had been disturbed.
However, today, its curiosity aroused because the leggers had gone out three times in three days, it had decided to investigate.
This tunnel, he presumed, ran underground into a room, or rooms, for many leggers dashed in and out of it.
Crouching, she entered the opening, but before she had gone far she had to move a tangled heap of leggers to one side.