Meanings
plural Tucker telephones
- A torture device for giving electric shocks, designed using parts from an old-fashioned crank telephone.
The inmate doctor wired him up on the "Tucker Telephone" with one wire to his penis and another to his big toe.
1992, British Medical Association, quoting Case report: Tucker State Prison Farm, Tucker, Arkansas (1966), Medicine Betrayed: The Participation of Doctors in Human Rights Abuses, Zed Books, page 331 more example
Although they enjoined the use of the Tucker telephone and similar instruments of torture, they noted that the Department of Corrections had dismissed a number of officials implicated in past violations and had instituted new rules to govern corporal punishment.
2000 March 18, Malcolm M. Feeley with Edward L. Rubin, Judicial Policy Making and the Modern State: How the Courts Reformed America's Prisons, Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, page 57
Origin
Named after the Tucker State Prison Farm, where its inventor Dr. A. E. Rollins worked.
Full word history & related roots →Cite this entry
Tucker telephone. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 5, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Tucker%20telephone
“Tucker telephone.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Tucker%20telephone. Accessed November 5, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “Tucker telephone,” accessed November 5, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/Tucker%20telephone.
Source: Tucker telephone on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.