ˈpolt-foot arch.
Also 6 powlt-, 6–7 poult-, 7 polte-.
[app. f. polt n. sense 2 + foot n.]
1. A club-foot.
| 1579 Lyly Euphues (Arb.) 97 Venus was content to take the blake Smith with his powlt foote. 1604 Dekker Honest Wh. Wks. 1873 II. 81 My eldest son had a polt foot, crooked legs. 1638 Sir T. Herbert Trav. (ed. 2) 338 The women are commonly modest,..shewing nothing but their polt-feet which from their infancy are straitned. 1659 Lady Alimony v. in Hazl. Dodsley XIV. 308 Vulcan's poult foot or his smutted look. 1840 Browning Sordello v. 266 ‘Polt-foot’, sang they, ‘was in a pitfall now’. |
2. attrib. (often poltfoot) = polt-footed.
| c 1589 Nashe Almond for Parrat B iv b, My Bedlam brother Wig. and poltfoote Pag. with the rest of those patches. 1601 B. Jonson Poetaster iv. vii, What's become of..the poult-foot stinkard, her husband? 1880 Swinburne Stud. Shaks. 185 The rough construction and the poltfoot metre, lame sense and limping verse. |
Hence ˈpolt-footed a., club-footed.
| 1589 Greene Menaphon (Arb.) 39 Though he [Vulcan] was polt-footed, yet he was a God. c 1619 B. Jonson Merc. Vind. Wks. (Rtldg.) 595/1 This polt-footed philosopher, old Smug here of Lemnos. |