a. [Cf. prec.]
1. Having long and slender legs; spindle-legged. (Usu. with contemptuous force.) a. Of persons or animals.
c. 1600. Timon, II. i. (1842), 25. I did reject … Demetrius Cause he was spindleshankt.
1692. Lond. Gaz., No. 2787/4. Went away from his Master…, one Cæsar Rammer,… aged about 14,… small of growth, and spindle-shank’d.
1713. Steele, Guardian, No. 97. Her lawyer … is a little, rivelled, spindle-shanked gentleman.
1754. ? Fielding, Fathers, II. i. I will neither marry my daughter to a spindle-shanked beau, nor my son to a rampant woman of quality.
1800. Sporting Mag., XV. 107. The poor, slight, weedy, spindle-shanked stock of brood mares.
1837. Creevey, in C. Papers (1904), II. 326. A chattering, capering, spindle-shanked gaby.
1863. Lytton, in Blackw. Mag., Sept., 276/1. The spindleshanked son of the notary Arouet.
b. Of articles of furniture.
1853. R. S. Surtees, Sponge’s Sp. Tour (1893), 135. An old spindle-shanked sideboard, with very little middle.
2. Of legs: Long and thin.
1664. Power, Exp. Philos., I. 17. Such prodigiously little spindle-shank’d leggs?
