dead leg

plural dead legs

1. A blow to the upper thigh, crushing the muscle against the bone and crushing the nerve cluster next to the quadriceps. Also, the resulting injury.

   I kneed you, I said, and I gave him a dead leg.

   1994, Roddy Doyle, Paddy Clarke, ha-ha-ha, page 225

   3 more examples

   Knowing all this it can still take you by surprise, like a dead leg or a sudden punch to the solar plexus.

   2009, Robert Twigger, Dr Ragab's Universal Language, →ISBN

   All at once something rose through the vacancy, the frightening void that was like the dead leg some kids had been adept at giving in the playground.

   2011, Roger Garfitt, Horseman's Word: A Memoir, →ISBN, page 306

   I would also not have had the delight of receiving a shockingly painful random dead leg from Ben Coulter who, as I collapsed to my knees in agonizing pain, would laugh so hard, it would bring up a big blue vein that ran down his huge, dome-like forehead.

   2011, Lee Evans, The Life of Lee, →ISBN

2. alternativeAlternative form of deadleg (isolated section of pipe with no outflow).

   Supply and return lines should not contain dead legs.

   2006, Greenhouse Management & Production

   2 more examples

   However, care has to be taken to prevent oily material congealing on the walls of pipes, tanks, pumps and other equipments where there are points of restrictions as valves, bends or dead legs.

   2003, M.M. Chakrabarty, Chemistry and Technology of Oils & Fats, →ISBN, page 201

   The use of “deadended” systems, or systems with long dead legs, is unacceptable and will have a significant effect on both chemical quality and points-of-use bacteria levels

   2016, William V. Collentro, Pharmaceutical Water, →ISBN

3. Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see dead, leg.