For quotations using this term, see Citations:cock pump.

‘He doorknocked thirty-two thousand houses,’ Thérèse says. ‘I doorknocked with him at weekends. That′s one way to get fit, especially when every house that I doorknocked was high-set, but I took the formal period of the campaign off.’

Barbara Johnson of Melodyland wrote to me about her Spatula Club. You need a bit of humor. Parents have to be scraped off the ceiling when they first find out. So we make these little spatulas. . . .

[…] Pope clapped his hand to his forehead and beagled like a maniac; he had clean forgotten Thorofare Gap.