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elbowy. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
elbowy, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
elbowy in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
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English
Etymology
From elbow + -y.
Adjective
elbowy (comparative more elbowy, superlative most elbowy)
- Tall and awkward. (of a person’s body)
- 1892, Ambrose Bierce, “A Society Leader” in Black Beetles in Amber, San Francisco: Western Authors Publishing Company, p. 85,
- Doubtless it gratifies you to observe
- Elbowy girls and adipose mamas
- All looking adoration as you swerve
- This way and that;
1921, Fannie Hurst, chapter 6, in Star-Dust, New York: Harper, page 34:Flora, rather freckly, elbowy, and far too tall, was none the less about to be pretty.
2008, Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures, New York: Schwartz & Wade, page 9:He is a tall man with shaggy hair and bad teeth, in a suit too big for his sharp, elbowy frame.
- Awkward; especially, involving the awkward protrusion of the elbows. (of a person’s movement)
1919, Tony Cyriax, chapter 17, in Among Italian Peasants, London: W. Collins & Sons, page 254:[…] I was noticing how very elbowy his gestures were […]
1992, Walter Kirn, chapter 5, in She Needed Me, New York: Pocket Books, page 43:She squirted in some liquid soap with an elbowy throwing motion.
2000, Gregory Fallis, “Comes the Revolution”, in Abigail Browning, editor, Burder is No Mitzvah, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, published 2004, page 52:I looked for Becker and his buddies—and there they were. Twenty yards away, moving through the crowd in an awkward, elbowy, distinctly non-New York way.
2003, Daniel Coyle, chapter 1, in Waking Samuel, New York: Bloomsbury, published 2004, page 11:“Well, you better like it,” she said, hiking up her red-and-white hosiery with an indelicate, elbowy gesture that reminded Sara of a football coach.
- Having bends that resemble elbows. (of a tree or branches)
- 1928, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, diary entry dated 3 May, 1928, in Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928, New York: Signet, 1973, p. 139,
- I looked out over my garden: the unkempt lush grass and the sweet-gum tree with elbowy boughs, crotchety and irregular.
1959, Bernard Wolfe, chapter 9, in The Great Prince Died, New York: Scribner, page 121:[…] he looked up and saw that one of the elbowy dead trees was grimed with vultures.
- Angular in an awkward way. (of a built structure)
1827, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 8, in The Red Rover, volume I, London: Henry Colburn, page 224:It is a place fit for a lady of her quality, and none of your elbowy dwellings like these crowded about us. One may easily tell the house, by its pretty blinds and its shades.
1854, Nathaniel Parker Willis, “Letters from England and the Continent in 1845-’46”, in Famous Persons and Places, New York: Scribner, Letter III, p. 354:The town (Abingdon) is a tumbled-up, elbowy, crooked old place, with the houses all frowning at each other across the gutters, and the streets narrow and intricate.
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