Also spindleshank, spindle shank. [SPINDLE sb. 15 a. Cf. G. spindelbein, LG. spil-, spillenbên, Du. spillebeen.]
1. A long and slender leg. (Chiefly with contemptuous force and usu. in pl.) a. Of persons.
1570. ? Redford, Marr. Witt & Sci., II. i. But what if she finde fault with these spindle shankes?
1581. Mulcaster, Positions, xxiv. (1887), 98. Quicke riding,… which so helped his spindle shankes.
1674. trans. Scheffer’s Lapland, 12. Slender wasts, spindle shanks, and swift of foot.
1700. Locke, in Fox Bourne, Life (1876), II. 480. I hope in my next, I shall be able to give a better account of my spindle-shanks.
1709. Steele & Addison, Tatler, No. 75, ¶ 8. The Marriage of one of our Heiresses with an eminent Courtier, who gave us Spindle-Shanks, and Cramps in our Bones.
1786. Burns, To a Haggis, vi. His spindle shank a guid whip-lash.
1840. Thackeray, George Cruikshank, Wks. 1899, XIII. 293. He will find them [Frenchmen] almost invariably thin, with ludicrous spindle-shanks.
1898. G. W. Steevens, With Kitchener to Khartum, 89. They … are willowy in figure, and their legs run to spindle-shanks, almost ridiculously.
b. Of articles of furniture.
1841. Dickens, Barn. Rudge, vi. A lonely bedchamber, garnished … with chairs whose spindle-shanks bespoke their age.
2. transf. A spindle-legged person.
1602. How Chuse Good Wife, II. iii. When didst thou see the starveling school-master?… that shrimp, that spindle-shank.
1828–32. Webster, Spindle-shanks, a tall slender person; in contempt.
1865. Slang Dict., 241. Spindle-shanks, a nickname for any one who has thin legs.
3. attrib. in the sense ‘having spindle-legs.’
1604. T. M., Black Bk., in Middleton’s Wks. (Bullen), VIII. 25. The spindle-shank spiders, which show like great lechers with little legs.
