I came across the wonderful word quockerwodger on the BBC Radio 4 programme Wordaholics. Surprisingly it doesn’t appear in the OED, but on World Wide Words it is defined as “a wooden toy figure which jerks its limbs about when pulled by a string”, and also a politician whose strings are pulled by someone else.
It’s origin is uncertain and it doesn’t appear to be related to the dialect words quocken (to vomit/choke), or quocker (a man who goes harvesting at some distance from home).
