wingy

From wing +‎ -y.

wingy (comparative more wingy, superlative most wingy)

1. (archaic) Winged, or as if winged; inclined to fly.
   • 1780, James Beattie, “Ode to Hope”, in Poems on Several Occasions, 4th edition, London: T. Strahan, T. Crowder, S. Becket, J. Lownds, T. Robinson, G. Clarke, →OCLC, stanza II.I., page 52:

     The path that leads, where, hung ſublime, / And ſeen afar, youth's gallant trophies, bright / In Fancy's rainbow ray, invite / His wingy nerves to climb.

   • 1862, Various, Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862‎:

     —and I ran up and down in the scale of semibreves and minims that I had heard, with the one long, sweet trill transfusing life on earth into heavenly existence, and I felt very wingy, very much as if I could take up the tower, standing high and square out there, and carry it, "like Loretto's chapel, through the air to the green land," where my spirit would go singing evermore.

   • 1880, William Rounseville Alger, The Destiny of the Soul‎:

     The later Pythagoreans and Platonists seem to have believed that the same numerical ethereal body with which the soul was at first created adhered to it inseparably during all its descents into grosser bodies, a lucid and wingy vehicle, which, purged by diet and catharms, ascends again, bearing the soul to its native seat.

wingy (plural wingies)

1. (slang) One who has an amputated arm or arms.
   • 1925, Glen Hawthorne Mullin, Adventures of a Scholar Tramp, page 187:

     He was crippled in one leg, which fact accounted for his moniker, for on the Road a lame man is a gimpy; even as a one-armed man is a wingy.

   • 1968, George Bremner Abel, Walking Skills for Amputees, page 57:

     All the golfers shown played in the N.Z. Annual "wingies" and "limbies" tournament, total number of competitors, 40.

   • 1976 -, Victor Cohn, Sister Kenny: The Woman Who Challenged the Doctors, →ISBN, page 63:

     Many of the cricketers were amputees, yet they were not without resources. The "wingies" did the running for the "stumpies," and the "stumpies" did the batting for the "wingies."

   • 2004, Daisy Bates, Peter J. Bridge, My Natives and I, page 154:

     Although I knew comparatively little of matronship, as such, I did know a great deal of mothering, and for "wingies and stumpies" as they called themselves, the blind and the maimed who had given so much, all the service and devotion of which I was capable was only too little.

2. (slang) One who has a wing position.
   • 1985, TAC Attack, page 19:

     Wingies, don't you love the lead who immediately rudders you out to route at 500 feet and then turns into you while giving a channel change.

   • 2000, David Corbett, Shield of Lantius, →ISBN, page 151:

     Damn it all, I know you're right, Dar, but I've never lost a wingy before.

   • 2014, L Suresh, The Pilani Pilgrims, →ISBN:

     My wingies tried to pep-talk me into believing that I could do better in the next test.