ppl. a. [f. STILT sb. and v. + -ED.]
1. Furnished with or having stilts (in quot. 1615, crutches); raised artificially as on stilts.
1615. Brathwait, Loves Labyrinth, 27. Decrepit age, stilted for want of strength.
1742. Young, Nt. Th., VI. 355. Where dwarfs are often stilted, and betray A littleness of soul by worlds o’er-run, And nations laid in blood.
b. (a) Supported on props or posts so as to be raised above the ground. (b) Arch. Raised above the general level by a course of masonry beneath, as an arch, vault, or other structure.
1820. Blackw. Mag., VIII. 31, note. The appearance of these stilted ricks … gives a sort of peculiarity to the landscape.
1835. R. Willis, Archit. Mid. Ages, vii. 78. All the arches are pointed, except the central transverse rib…, which is semi-circular and stilted.
1883. Miss Bird, Golden Chersonese, 163. It is a genuine Malay house on stilts…. This stilted house is the barrack of eleven Malay constables.
1895. Jrnl. R. Inst. Brit. Architects, 14 March, 347. Corinthian capitals, supporting stilted pointed arches.
c. Of animals, esp. birds: Having very long slender legs resembling stilts.
1869–73. T. R. Jones, Cassell’s Bk. Birds, II. 162. The Stilted Fly-catchers (Fluvicolæ) … a group of South American birds.
1896. Lydekker, Roy. Nat. Hist., V. 134. The stilted lizards.
2. fig. Of (or in reference to) language or style (or, rarely, manner or deportment): Artificially or affectedly lofty; unnaturally elevated; formally pompous. (The usual current sense.)
1820. Byron, To Murray, 28 Sept. You are taken in by that false, stilted, trashy style.
1832. S. Warren, Diary Late Physic., II. iii. 134. One might wither that fellow with a word or two, the stilted noodle!
1874. Green, Short Hist., x. (1878), 730. His [Pitt’s] letters to his family … are stilted and unnatural in tone.
1909. Rider Haggard, Yellow God, 55–6. It [merriment] caused him to cease his stilted talk and relapse into the strange vernacular that is common to all negroes, tinctured with a racy slang that was all his own.
3. Of a plow: Having a stilt or stilts: in parasynthetic formations, as double-, single-stilted.
1844. W. H. Maxwell, Scot., xvi. (1855), 149. A single-stilted plough.
1911. E. Beveridge, North Uist, x. 315. Double-stilted ploughs.
Hence (in sense 2) Stiltedly adv.; Stiltedness.
1828. Lytton, Pelham, lxvii. There is a stiffness and stiltedness in the dialogue and descriptions perfectly ridiculous.
c. 1886. Kipling, Lucia, 49. What the later generation is pleased to call the stiltedness of the old-time verse.
1893. ‘G. Travers,’ Mona Maclean, III. 252. He began somewhat stiltedly.
