Dictionary

elbowy en · ADJ

Etymology

From elbow + -y.

Meanings

1. Tall and awkward. (of a person’s body)
   • Where I was big, elbowy and grating, he was small, graceful and smooth. 1969, Maya Angelou, chapter 4, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, New York: Bantam, published 1971, page 17:
   • He is a tall man with shaggy hair and bad teeth, in a suit too big for his sharp, elbowy frame. 2008, Polly Horvath, My One Hundred Adventures, New York: Schwartz & Wade, page 9:
   • 1892, Ambrose Bierce, “A Society Leader” in Black Beetles in Amber, San Francisco: Western Authors Publishing Company, p. 85, Doubtless it gratifies you to observe Elbowy girls and adipose mamas All looking adoration as you swerve This way and that;
   • Flora, rather freckly, elbowy, and far too tall, was none the less about to be pretty. 1921, Fannie Hurst, chapter 6, in Star-Dust, New York: Harper, page 34:
2. Awkward; especially, involving the awkward protrusion of the elbows. (of a person’s movement)
   • “Well, you better like it,” she said, hiking up her red-and-white hosiery with an indelicate, elbowy gesture that reminded Sara of a football coach. 2003, Daniel Coyle, chapter 1, in Waking Samuel, New York: Bloomsbury, published 2004, page 11:
   • She squirted in some liquid soap with an elbowy throwing motion. 1992, Walter Kirn, chapter 5, in She Needed Me, New York: Pocket Books, page 43:
   • […] I was noticing how very elbowy his gestures were […] 1919, Tony Cyriax, chapter 17, in Among Italian Peasants, London: W. Collins & Sons, page 254:
   • I looked for Becker and his buddies—and there they were. Twenty yards away, moving through the crowd in an awkward, elbowy, distinctly non-New York way. 2000, Gregory Fallis, “Comes the Revolution”, in Abigail Browning, editor, Burder is No Mitzvah, New York: Thomas Dunne Books, published 2004, page 52:
3. Having bends that resemble elbows. (of a tree or branches)
   • […] he looked up and saw that one of the elbowy dead trees was grimed with vultures. 1959, Bernard Wolfe, chapter 9, in The Great Prince Died, New York: Scribner, page 121:
   • 1928, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, diary entry dated 3 May, 1928, in Bring Me a Unicorn: Diaries and Letters of Anne Morrow Lindbergh, 1922-1928, New York: Signet, 1973, p. 139, I […] looked out over my garden: the unkempt lush grass and the sweet-gum tree with elbowy boughs, crotchety and irregular.
4. Angular in an awkward way. (of a built structure)
   • It is a place fit for a lady of her quality, and none of your elbowy dwellings like these crowded about us. One may easily tell the house, by its pretty blinds and its shades. 1827, James Fenimore Cooper, chapter 8, in The Red Rover, volume I, London: Henry Colburn, page 224:
   • The town (Abingdon) is a tumbled-up, elbowy, crooked old place, with the houses all frowning at each other across the gutters, and the streets narrow and intricate. 1854, Nathaniel Parker Willis, “Letters from England and the Continent in 1845-’46”, in Famous Persons and Places, New York: Scribner, Letter III, p. 354:

Forms

Synonyms

gangly (tall and awkward)