spindle-shank
Also spindleshank, spindle shank.
[spindle n. 15 a. Cf. G. spindelbein LG. spil-, spillenbên, Du. spillebeen.]
1. A long and slender leg. (Chiefly with contemptuous force and usu. in pl.) a. Of persons.
| 1570 ? Redford Marr. Wit. & Sci. ii. i, But what if she finde fault with these spindle shankes? 1581 Mulcaster Positions xxiv. (1887) 98 Quicke riding,..which so helped his spindle shankes. 1674 tr. Scheffer's Lapland 12 Slender wasts, spindle shanks, and swift of foot. 1700 Locke in Fox Bourne Life (1876) II. 480, I hope in my next, I shall be able to give a better account of my spindle-shanks. 1709 Steele & Addison Tatler No. 75. ¶8 The Marriage of one of our Heiresses with an eminent Courtier, who gave us Spindle-Shanks, and Cramps in our Bones. 1786 Burns To a Haggis vi, His spindle shank a guid whip-lash. 1840 Thackeray George Cruikshank Wks. 1899 XIII. 293 He will find them [Frenchmen] almost invariably thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks. 1898 Steevens With Kitchener to Khartoum 89 They..are willowy in figure, and their legs run to spindle-shanks, almost ridiculously. |
b. Of articles of furniture.
| 1841 Dickens Barn. Rudge vi, A lonely bedchamber, garnished..with chairs whose spindle-shanks bespoke their age. |
2. trans. A spindle-legged person.
| 1602 How Chuse Good Wife ii. iii, When didst thou see the starveling school-master?..that shrimp, that spindle⁓shank. 1828–32 Webster, Spindle-shanks, a tall slender person; in contempt. 1865 Slang Dict. 241 Spindle-shanks, a nickname for any one who has thin legs. |
3. attrib. in the sense ‘having spindle-legs’.
| 1604 T. M. Black Bk. in Middleton's Wks. (Bullen) VIII. 25 The spindle-shank spiders, which show like great lechers with little-legs. |