a. Having web-feet.
1681. Grew, Musæum, I. § iv. iii. 69. Web-footed Fowl or Palmipede’s.
1745. P. Thomas, Voy. S. Seas, 337. Flamingoes…. The Legs are … Web-footed like a Goose.
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist., III. 191. It [the capibara] is in a manner web-footed.
1818. Keats, Endym., IV. 245. Web-footed alligators.
1851. Mayhew, Lond. Labour (1861), II. 137/1. One of these men … was, it is said, web-footed, naturally, and partially web-fingered.
1910. Encycl. Brit., XI. 352/1. Platypus … is of aquatic habits, being web-footed.
Hence Web-footedness (Cent. Dict., 1891).
1852. Tennessee Baptist, 3 April, 2/3. How it sounds for Methodists to talk about web-footedness ‘an element consonant with his nature in the mud-puddle,’ when they will go to the mud-puddle, rather than lose a member—when immersion in one of the three modes enjoined in their Discipline!!!
