Word: extensor
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...wheel with his whole strength. His arms stiffen, and he is as likely to steer off the road as along it. His legs are forcibly extended, and his feet are pressed down hard. It is the muscular act that Sherrington, who discovered it in the dog, named the 'extensor thrust.' . . . In so doing [the motorist] presses his foot hard down on the accelerator pedal. If then the first jump of the car sends it along a course where it meets other jolts and bumps in rapid succession, the driver tries in vain to recover the equilibrium...
...animals, fully developed in newborn babes, unshakable by training. Now that it imperils motorcar operators, Dr. Henderson thinks it could be successfully sidetracked by installing a pedal in the shape of a wide panel almost flush with the floor boards under the driver's left foot. When the "extensor thrust" shoots both his legs out, though the right foot may jam down the accelerator, the pedal pushed by the left foot will turn off the ignition or close the carburetor intake...
...like manner those publications that reprint in extensor the naturally biased statements of publishers and producers without so much as casting a critical eye over them are guilty of furthering the designs of prejudiced prophets, it standards of taste are to be elevated to any appreciable degree, the duplicity involved in so playing about on the border-line between truth and falsehood must have...