kneed

1. 1
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of knee.

   The wrestler kneed his rival in the side before the referee broke them apart.

   He had kneed the ball clear just before the striker arrived.

   Note

   Regular in form, with one quirk of spelling: knee simply adds -d, so the doubled e stays and no third one appears. The verb takes a direct object (he kneed his rival), which is the quickest way to tell it from the adjective of the same spelling. In the archaic sense "to kneel to," kneed meant paying homage rather than striking.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having a knee or knees; in combination, having the type of knee specified by the preceding word.

   Elephants are kneed in a way that lets them bend their legs and lower themselves to the ground.

   The newborn foal was long-kneed and unsteady on the wet straw.

   Note

   A noun turned adjective with -ed, the same suffix that gives bearded and winged. It does most of its work in compounds such as knobbly-kneed and long-kneed, which are hyphenated before a noun (a knobbly-kneed boy). Standing alone, as in a kneed biped, it simply marks that knees are there. Keep it apart from the past tense of the verb: the adjective describes a body, the verb an action.

3. 3
   adjective

   Having angular joints or bends that resemble a bent knee.

   Botanists noted the kneed stalk, which angled abruptly just above the lowest node.

   Some grasses are distinctly kneed, their stems bending like a flexed leg.

   Similarangled, bent

   Oppositestraight

   Note

   Botanical writing borrows the body here, and the comparison is the whole meaning. A kneed stalk has no joint in the anatomical sense, only a sharp angle at a node. It is the plain English counterpart to the Latinate geniculate, and the two name the same shape. Unlike the "having knees" sense, nothing described this way actually possesses a knee.

Showing meanings only. Show all 3