elbowy

elbowy

English

Etymology

elbow +‎ -y

Adjective

elbowy (comparative more elbowy, superlative most elbowy)

1. (of a person’s body) Tall and awkward.
   • 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, Star-Dust, New York: Harper, Chapter 6, p. 34,

     Flora, rather freckly, elbowy, and far too tall, was none the less about to be pretty.

   • 1969, Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, 1971, Chapter 4, p. 17,

     Where I was big, elbowy and grating, he was small, graceful and smooth.

   • 2008, Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures, New York: Schwartz & Wade, p. 9,

     He is a tall man with shaggy hair and bad teeth, in a suit too big for his sharp, elbowy frame.

2. (of a person’s movement) Awkward; especially, involving the awkward protrusion of the elbows.
   • 1919, Tony Cyriax, Among Italian Peasants, London: W. Collins & Sons, Chapter 17, p. 254,

     […] I was noticing how very elbowy his gestures were […]

   • 1992, Walter Kirn, She Needed Me, New York: Pocket Books, Chapter Five, p. 43,

     She squirted in some liquid soap with an elbowy throwing motion.

   • 2000, Gregory Fallis, “Comes the Revolution” in Abigail Browning (ed.), Burder is No Mitzvah, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, 2004, p. 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, Waking Samuel, New York: Bloomsbury, 2004, Chapter 1, p. 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.

3. (of a tree or branches) Having bends that resemble elbows.
   • 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, The Great Prince Died, New York: Scribner, Chapter 9, p. 121,

     […] he looked up and saw that one of the elbowy dead trees was grimed with vultures.

4. (of a built structure) Angular in an awkward way.
   • 1827, James Fenimore Cooper, The Red Rover, London: Henry Colburn, Volume I, Chapter 8, p. 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, Famous Persons and Places, New York: Scribner, “Letters from England and the Continent in 1845-’46,” 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.

Synonyms

• (tall and awkward): gangly

Anagrams

• Bowley