1. Hanging down limply or lankly, drooping, pendulous.
1576. Newton, Lemnie’s Complex. (1633), 151. The feet stagger and stumble, the eyes dazell, the lustinesse of the minde drowneth and is dulled, the cheekes seeme flaggy and hanging downe, the tongue stammering, and the teeth gnashing and whetting.
1590. Spenser, F. Q., I. xi. 10.
| His flaggy wings when forth he did display, | |
| Were like two sayles, in which the hollow wynd | |
| Is gathered full, and worketh speedy way. |
c. 1620. T. Robinson, M. Magd., I. 238. Curlinge ye flaggy lockes of the Neptunian plaine.
1681. Lond. Gaz., No. 1614/4. A Tall Man with Brown flaggy Hair.
1697. Dryden, Virg. Georg., IV. 39.
| That basking in the Sun thy Bees may lie, | |
| And resting there, their flaggy Pinions dry. |
1725. De Foe, Voy. Round World (1840), 135. She was quite naked from her head to below her breasts; her breasts were plump and round, not flaggy and hanging down, as it generally is with the Indian women, some of whose breasts hang as low as their bellies, but projecting as beautifully as if they had been laced up with stays round her body.
1814. H. Busk, Fugit. Pieces, 229.
| The wanton waves, their painted bark around, | |
| Sport with its broad white bosom, as the breeze | |
| Just lays their rudeness, and the flaggy sail | |
| Chides the dull absence of the quickening gale. |
1821. W. M. Craig, Lectures on Drawing, etc., i. 52. A large head with a long beard, and wide-spread, flaggy wings, which is understood to represent a Jupiter Pluvius.
2. Soft and flabby, having no firmness, flaccid.
a. 1565. Sir T. Chaloner, in Q. Eliz. Boethius (E.E.T.S.), 147. My skynne do sagg in wrinkles slacke, my flaggy lymbes do tremble.
1626. Bacon, Sylva, § 453. Graft an Apple-Cions vpon the Stocke of a Colewort, and it will beare a great flaggy Apple.
1634. T. Horne, Janua Ling. (ed. 8), 9. Lillies … Wither and grow flaggy.
1668. Culpepper & Cole, Barthol. Anat., II. iii. 91. It [the Heart] becomes soft and flaggy, and gives no pulsation.
1705. Bosman, Guinea, xiv. 238. Nor is there any want of Hogs in the least; but those bred by the Negroes, are really worth nothing, the Flesh is so flaggy and the Bacon so sorry.
1888. Elworthy, W. Somerset Word-bk., Flaggy, flabby, limp.
Hence Flagginess, the state of being flaggy.
1654. Z. Coke, Logic, Ded. (1657), A iij b. Through the flagginesse of her Pinion.
1684. trans. Bonet’s Merc. Compit., XIV. 480. When there is a weakness of the Stomach, especially a flagginess.
1736. Bailey, Househ. Dict., 60. The lungs, by their flagginess fastening themselves to the sides.
1755. Johnson, Flagginess, laxity, limberness, want of tension.
