rickety, a.
(ˈrɪkɪtɪ)
Also 7– ricketty.
[f. ricket n.1 + -y.]
1. a. Affected with, suffering from, rickets; subject to rickets.
| c 1720 Gibson Farrier's Guide ii. v. (1738) 189 Bones..not unlike those of ricketty children. 1775 Phil. Trans. LXVI. 103 On shore they walk quite erect with a waddling motion, like a rickety child. 1835–6 Todd's Cycl. Anat. I. 440/2 The consistence of a ricketty bone is but slightly different from that of common cartilage. a 1859 Macaulay Hist. Eng. xxiii. V. 102 Till he was ten years old..he was never once suffered to stand on his ricketty legs. 1897 Allbutt's Syst. Med. III. 110 The pulmonary diseases to which rickety subjects are extremely prone. |
b. fig. or in fig. context.
| 1685 Crowne Sir C. Nice i, A conscience swaddled so hard in its infancy by strict education..that the weak ricketty thing can endure nothing. 1790 Burke Fr. Rev. 334 This benevolence, the ricketty offspring of weakness. 1812 H. & J. Smith Rej. Addr. 83 The new House of Commons, 'Tis a rickety sort of a bantling I'm told. 1843 Carlyle Past & Pr. (1858) 277 Deliver me these rickety, perishing souls of infants. 1884 Pall Mall G. 26 Jan. 2/1 To fancy that we could establish Tewfik firmly on his rickety legs. |
† c. transf. Of grain: Weakly, unhealthy. Obs.
| 1759 Mills tr. Duhamel's Husb. i. xv. (1762) 84 The abortive ears grow on rickety stalks, of a white colour. Ibid. ii. ii. 247 It contained a pretty considerable number of rickety plants, which yielded but little grain. |
2. Weakly, feeble, shaky, tottering; lacking in strength or firmness: a. Of ideas, the mind, etc.
| 1738 Warburton Div. Legat. I. Dedic. p. vii, Crude and rickety Notions crampt by Restraint. 1771 Smollett Humph. Cl. 2 April ii, I wish those impertinent fellows, with their ricketty understandings, would keep their advice for those that ask it. 1802–12 Bentham Ration. Judic. Evid. (1827) V. 345 It is by the swallowing of such potions, that the mind of man is rendered feeble and ricketty. 1849 H. Mayo Pop. Superst. (1851) 51 Giving rise to the rickety forms of popular superstition. 1863 Cowden Clarke Shaks. Char. vi. 153 His spirit is so rickety that he cannot trust it alone. |
b. Of material things, esp. articles of furniture, stairs, bridges, or other wooden erections.
| 1799 R. Kirwan Geol. Ess. 198 We learn to distinguish decayed ricketty basalts from porous lavas. 1806–7 J. Beresford Miseries Hum. Life (1826) viii. xxxii, Writing at the same ricketty table with another. 1842 Lever J. Hinton iii, We mounted an old-fashioned and rickety stair. 1869 H. F. Tozer Highl. Turkey I. 285 The river..is spanned by a long ricketty wooden bridge. |
c. Of motions, actions, or condition.
| 1832 W. Irving Alhambra II. 51 The parrot burst into a fit of dry rickety laughter. 1846 FitzGerald Lett. (1889) I. 165 He was in a ricketty state of body; brought on wholly by neglect. 1855 Thackeray Newcomes i, Exception will yet be taken to their ricketty strut. 1898 M. Hewlett Forest Lovers ix, She broke now into a rickety canter. |
3. a. Of the nature of rickets; pertaining to rickets.
| 1801 Med. Jrnl. V. 294 Scrophulous and ricketty affections. 1876 J. S. Bristowe Th. & Pract. Med. (1878) 920 The precursory symptoms belong properly to the earlier stages of the rickety process. 1879 St. George's Hosp. Rep. IX. 365 Ricketty curvature of legs. |
b. rickety rosary, a line of swellings on either side of the chest, reminiscent of strings of beads and symptomatic of rickets.
| [1887 Vickery & Knapp tr. Strümpell's Text-bk. Med. 868 There is a swelling at the junction of the cartilages with the ribs, which can be felt and seen through the skin, and produces what is called the ‘rosary of rickets’.] 1907 G. F. Still in W. Osler Mod. Med. I. xxxiii. 876 The most frequent [osseous] manifestation [of rickets] is the so-called ‘rickety rosary’, or beading of the ribs, a thickening at the costochondral junction which in a thin child can be seen and in others easily felt. 1970 W. H. Parker Health & Dis. in Farm Animals i. 7 In a pup or child suffering from rickets they can actually be seen because of the enlargement of the joints which occur with this disease, giving rise to the grim phrase ‘a ricketty rosary’. 1974 Passmore & Robson Compan. Med. Stud. III. xxiv. 21/2 In the chest an early sign [of rickets] is bleeding of the costochondral junctions. This is called rickety rosary as the beads extend in chain fashion down both sides of the thorax. |
So ˈricketiness, rickety condition.
| 1867 G. M. Hopkins Further Lett. (1956) 48 The more frankly you confess the ‘ricketiness’ of yr. position, do you see, the less excuse you have yourself for staying in it? 1872 Daily News 5 Nov., The ricketiness of their legislative offspring. 1904 Sladen Lovers Japan ii, ‘You will know that the staircase is safe.’ (Rich was making a grimace at its ricketiness.) |