Stilt sb.

Also 4–6 stilte, 5–6 stylt(e. [ME. stilte, cogn. w. (M)LG., MDu. stelte (mod.LG. stelte, stilte, Du. stelt), OHG. stelza (MHG., mod.G. stelze), Sw. stylta, Da. stylte; also LG. stelter, Norw. styltra.

  The relation between the forms is somewhat obscure; they apparently point to three OTeut. ablaut-types steltjōn-, *staltjōn-, *stultjōn-. The Teut. root *stelt- (:—pre-Teut. *steld-) conjectured to mean ‘to walk stiffly,’ seems to be represented also in MHG. stolzen to limp, Sw. stulta to totter, stagger, and perh. (if the word be native Teut.) in OFris. stult, LG. stolt, HG. stolz stately, proud (see STOUT a.).]

  1.  The handle of a plow. ? Obs. exc. dial.

c. 1340.  Nominale (Skeat), 854. Manuel et tenoun Handle and stilte.

1523, 1581.  [see PLOUGH-STILT].

1653.  Blithe, Engl. Improver Impr., 190. For the Plough-handles, some call them Stilts, and some Hales, and some Staves.

1798.  C. Cruttwell, Gazetteer (1808), s.v. Pomona, The plough … is of singular construction, having only one stilt.

1829.  Scott, Rob Roy, Introd. 2nd half, He … shot MacLaren when between the stilts of his plough.

1840.  Penny Cycl., XVIII. 272/1. The stilts or handles, of which there may be one or two, direct the plough.

1880.  [A. J. Munby], Dorothy, 35.

  2.  A crutch. Obs. exc. dial.

  In quot. 1520 applied to a crutch-headed walking-stick as figured on a brass.

c. 1320.  Sir Tristr., 2956. On astilt he com þo Ful swiþe.

a. 1375.  Joseph Arim., 335. Verely she was heled, and left her styltes thore, And on her fete went home resonably well.

14[?].  Beryn, 2380. A Crepill he saw comyng … Oppon a stilt vndir his kne.

1520.  Brass in Ingoldmells Church, Pray for the sowle of Wylliam Palmer wyth the stylt.

c. 1590.  Marlowe, Jew of Malta, II. 977. (Brooke) I haue laugh’d agood to see the cripples Goe limping home to Christendome on stilts.

1658.  A. Fox, trans. Würtz’ Surg., II. xxvi. 170. This party carried it (a recovered limb) as well as any did with a stilt.

1697.  in M’Kerlie’s Hist. Lands Galloway (1870), I. 245. You … did … beatt her almost to death with the stilt wherewith she walked.

a. 1825.  Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Stilts, crutches.

  † b.  gen. A prop, support. In quot. fig. Obs.

1633.  Wariston, Diary (S.H.S.), 34. God as it wer … uphalding the by three stilts of fayth love and hope.

  3.  Each of a pair of props, usually slender wooden poles with a foot-rest some distance above the lower end, for enabling a person to walk with the feet raised from the ground, as over a marshy place, a stream, etc., the upper end being held by the hand or under the arm, or (in a modified form) strapped to the legs, or formerly sometimes fastened beneath the feet. (The ordinary current sense.) Phrase, to walk on (formerly † in) stilts.

c. 1440.  Promp. Parv., 475/2. Stylte, calepodium, lignipodium.

c. 1460.  Burlesque, in Rel. Ant., I. 86. Dore-bundys stalkyng one stylttus.

1519.  Horman, Vulg., 279. Let vs daunce patende, or with styltis.

1596.  Nashe, Saffron Walden, V 4 b. To consume my bodie as slender as a stilt or a broome-staffe.

1610.  Holland, Camden’s Brit., I. 491. Fen-men … who stalking on high upon stilts, apply their mindes, to grasing, fishing and fowling.

1714.  Addison, Spect., No. 559, ¶ 6. One of these looked like a Man walking upon Stilts.

1852.  Thackeray, Esmond, I. Introd. The actors in the old tragedies,… speaking from under a mask, and wearing stilts and a great head-dress.

1863.  Geo. Eliot, Romola, I. viii. Those mysterious giants were really men … balancing themselves on stilts.

  b.  transf. Applied to long slender legs, or other natural supports (quot. 1665), of an animal, esp. a bird (cf. sense 5).

1597.  A. M., trans. Guillemeau’s Fr. Chirurg., 50 b. Those which we saye to be hipped and legged, or have a payere of goode and stedfast stiltes vnder them.

1665.  Sir T. Herbert, Trav. (1677), 26. This fish … wanting fins; in place whereof she is aided with two paps, which are not only suckles, but serve for stilts to creep a shoar upon.

1709.  T. Robinson, Vindic. Mosaick Syst., 66. Herns … walking by the Sides of shallow Rivulets upon long Stilts.

1835–6.  Owen, in Todd’s Cycl. Anat., I. 272/1. Birds that seek their food in water … wade into rivers and marshes on elevated stilts, as in the Crane, &c.

  c.  fig. or in figurative expressions, usually with allusion to the artificially raised position or long strides of a person walking on stilts: cf. STILTED 2.

1734.  trans. Rollin’s Anc. Hist. (1827), I. 110. Æschylus … his muse seemned rather to walk in stilts than in the buskins of his own invention.

1751.  Fielding, Amelia, V. i. Booth offered to explain, but to no purpose; the colonel was got into his stilts.

1781.  H. Walpole, Lett. to W. Mason, 14 April. Hurlothrumbo talked plain English in comparison of this wight on stilts [Dr. Johnson].

1818.  Hazlitt, Engl. Poets, i. (1870), 13. When artists or connoisseurs talk on stilts about the poetry of painting.

1826.  Landor, Imag. Conv., Ld. Brooke & Sidney, Wks. 1846, I. 6/1. Ambition is but Avarice on stilts and masked.

1861.  C. Benson, in Macm. Mag., Feb., 275. The whole audience raised itself on the stilts of expectation.

1883.  Hall Caine, Cobwebs of Crit., vii. 199. Lifting himself into notoriety on the stilts of blasphemy.

  4.  In various technical senses.

  a.  Each of a set of posts or piles on which a building (esp. of primitive construction) is raised from the ground, or which are fixed under water to support the pier of a bridge, etc. (In quot. 1697, transf.; cf. sense 3 b.)

1697.  Dampier, Voy., I. 54. Neither the black nor white Mangrove grow towering up from stilts or rising roots, as the red doth; but the body immediately out of the ground, like other Trees.

1712.  E. Cooke, Voy. S. Sea, 315. The Houses are built with split Bamboes,… standing on Stilts, or Posts.

1739.  Labelye, Piers Westm. Bridge, 42. Which method is commonly called building upon stilts.

1772.  C. Hutton, Bridges, 100. Stilts, a set of piles driven into the space intended for the pier, whose tops being sawed level off about low-water mark, the pier is then raised on them.

1860.  Burn’s Gloss. Techn. Terms, 4. Stilts, piles driven into a river at small intervals, and a surrounding row of piles driven closely together, and the interstices filled with stones, to form a foundation for a pier to be built upon.

1883.  Miss Bird, Golden Chersonese, 217. Below there is a village, with clusters of Chinese houses on the ground, and Malay houses on stilts, standing singly.

  b.  Arch. A vertical course of masonry placed beneath and continuous with an arch or vault so as to raise the springing of it above the general level, or for a similar purpose beneath or above a column. Cf. STILT v. 1 b, STILTED ppl. a. 1 b (b).

1835.  R. Willis, Archit. Mid. Ages, vii. 77. The latter [i.e., clerestory or longitudinal arches] are raised upon stilts,… so as to throw their imposts considerably above those of the transverse arches.

1842.  Civil Engin. & Arch. Jrnl., V. 80/1. The continuous stilt or too lofty stylobate of the College of Surgeons.

1908.  Lena Milman, Sir Chr. Wren, 206. Corinthian pilasters, which, by a two-fold stilt above their capitals, reach to the great cornice.

  † c.  Some appendage to a bell. (Perh. = stay: see STAY sb.² 2 h, quot. 1871.) Obs.

1672.  in W. O. Blunt, Ch. Chester-le-Street (1884), 98. For cotterels, wedges, and for mending the stilt of the bell.

  d.  Part of a type-founder’s ‘lining-stick’ or lining-gauge: see quot. 1688.

1683.  Moxon, Mech. Exerc., Printing, xvii. 155. The Stilt is a thin flat piece of Brass-Plate about a Scaboard thick, and a Double-Pica broad.

1688.  R. Holme, Armoury, III. xxi. (Roxb.), 262/2. A Letter Founders Lining Stick;… whose seueralls are as followeth…. The Stilt, a slender ledge set vnder the side, to tilt vp the fore edge, that letters lying on it may rest against the bottom ledge.

  † e.  A support for a cask. Obs.

1701.  Lond. Gaz., No. 3721/3. Several Hogsheads of Claret being ready placed on Stilts,… the Claret was set running.

  f.  Pottery. A small piece of baked ware placed between pieces of biscuit ware to prevent their adhering to each other in the kiln.

1825.  J. Nicholson, Operat. Mechanic, 473. Pieces of clay … called stilts, cockspurs,… &c. are put to keep them apart.

1880.  Janvier, Pract. Keramics, 70. The pieces are supported and held apart by little fireclay instruments or props, which from their shape derive such names as pins or thimbles, watches, cock-spurs, triangles or stilts.

  5.  Any bird of the widely distributed genus Himantopus, characterized by very long slender legs and slender sharp bills, and inhabiting marshes; a long-legged plover. Cf. TILT sb.² 9.

  [Perh. short for still-plover or stilt-bird (see 6), or imitated from G. stelze short for bachstelze brook-‘stilt,’ an alteration of the OHG. name waȥȥerstelza water-‘stilt.’]

1831.  Montagu’s Ornith. Dict. (ed. Rennie), 496. Stilt (Himantopus melanopterus, Meyer).

1838.  Audubon, Ornith., IV. 247. Black-necked Stilt, Himantopus nigricollis.

1861.  H. B. Tristram, Gt. Sahara, iv. 62. The beautiful black-winged stilt, the tamest of waders.

c. 1875.  Cassell’s Nat. Hist., IV. 167. The Stilts have a straight bill, but in other respects they are not unlike the Avocets.

  6.  attrib. and Comb., as stilt-maker, -vaulting; stilt-legged, -like adjs.; stilt-bird, (a) = sense 5; (b) any long-legged wading bird, a grallatorial bird; † stilt-bond, ? a band by which a stilt is fastened to the leg or foot; stilt-bug (U.S.), any one of the long-legged plant-lice of the family Berytidæ; stilt-heeled a., (of shoes) high-heeled; stilt-man, a man who walks on stilts; stilt-petrel, a petrel of the genus Fregetta, having long legs (also stilt stormy petrel); stilt-plover = sense 5; stilt prolegs, Ent., the prolegs of a caterpillar when unusually long, so as to raise the body; stilt sandpiper, a long-legged N. American species of sandpiper, Micropalama himantopus; stilt-shank = sense 5; stilt-walker, (a) a person who walks on stilts (also transf.); (b) = stilt-bird (b).

1835–6.  Owen, in Todd’s Cycl. Anat., I. 287/2. The *Stilt-bird and other Waders.

1870.  Gillmore, trans. Figuier’s Reptiles & Birds, 294. The Stilt Birds … obtain their name from the excessive length of their legs.

c. 1475.  Pict. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 775/14. Hoc subligar, a *styltbonde.

1895.  Comstock, Man. Insects, 143. Family Berytidæ. The *Stilt-bugs.

1772.  Nugent, Hist. Fr. Gerund, II. 437. On *Stilt-heel’d shoes Mounted she Struts.

1863.  Bates, Nat. Amazons, ix. (1864), 247. Flocks of *stilt-legged water-fowl.

1889.  Hardwicke’s Sci.-Gossip, XXV. 189/2. The curious postures assumed by the animal [a species of rotifer] upon its long *stilt-like toes.

1625.  in J. P. Shawcross, Hist. Dagenham (1904), 253.

1898.  Westm. Gaz., 27 Sept., 6/2. Stilt-makers disavow the intelligence that they are full of orders.

1552.  Huloet, *Stylt man or goer on a stilte, grallator.

1586.  Acts Privy Counc., N. S. XIV. 75. Providing … of xij or xvj Scatchemen or Stiltmen in the countie of Lincolne, to be chosen of the best able and most experte men.

1890.  E. H. Barker, Wayfaring in France, 37. The stiltmen observed this little comedy with quiet wonder.

1779.  G. White, Selborne, To Barrington, 7 May. These birds are of the plover family, and might with propriety be called the *stilt-plovers.

c. 1875.  Cassell’s Nat. Hist., IV. 167. The Stilts, or Stile plovers (Himantopinæ).

1826.  Kirby & Sp., Entomol., IV. 354. *Stilt Prolegs.

1872.  Coues, N. Amer. Birds, 253. Micropalama, *Stilt Sandpiper.

1852.  Macgillivray, Brit. Birds, IV. 310. Himantopus. *Stilt-shank.

1884.  Coues, N. Amer. Birds (ed. 2), 782. Fregetta, *Stilt Stormy Petrels.

1861.  Mayhew, Lond. Labour, III. 151. Rope dancing and *stilt-vaulting.

1869–73.  T. R. Jones, Cassell’s Bk. Birds, IV. 1. The *Stilt-walkers (Grallatores).

1889.  F. H. Herrick, in Amer. Nat., Nov., 943. A growth of tropical bush, in which we notice the mangrove, the stilt-walker of the tropical swamp.

1891.  Daily News, 3 April, 5/6. Sylvain Dornon, the stilt-walker, who is on a tour for a wager from Paris to Moscow.