legged

Pluralleggeds

1. 1
   adjective

   Having legs of a particular number or type, specified by the word that precedes it in a compound.

   The table's four-legged frame kept it steady on the uneven floor.

   Spiders are eight-legged creatures, unlike the six-legged insects they prey on.

   Oppositelegless

   Note

   Here -ed is fastened to a noun, not a verb. Middle English legged is simply leg plus the suffix meaning "having," as in bearded or winged. The sense almost always lives in hyphenated compounds, such as hairy-legged spiders or the three-legged table in Thomas Hardy's Far From the Madding Crowd (1874). The word itself does not compare. When giraffes are the longest-legged animals, it is long that takes -est.

2. 2
   adjective

   Having legs, or otherwise provided with legs, in contrast to a legless form.

   Engineers prefer legged machines for terrain that wheeled vehicles cannot cross.

   A legged stool is sturdier on uneven floors than one resting on a solid base.

   Oppositelegless

   Note

   Standing alone, with no number or type in front, the word turns up mostly in technical writing: legged robots and legged vehicles in engineering, legged vessels in archaeology. In those fields it sorts designs by how they stand or move, such as a legged robot against a wheeled one. Writers who need the count switch to the compound form, as in three-legged.

3. 3
   verb

   Simple past and past participle of leg.

   The rider legged her mare firmly toward the last jump.

   The shortstop legged out an infield single in the ninth inning.

   Note

   A different word from the adjectives, built on the verb leg rather than the noun. The final g doubles before -ed. One spelling serves as both simple past (she legged her mare toward the jump) and past participle after have or be (the carcasses had been legged). Its meanings follow the verb's: a rider pressing with the leg, a butcher taking legs off a carcass, a builder setting legs under a stage.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   A person, animal, or thing having a particular number or type of legs, named by a preceding word.

   The shepherd counted every four-legged in the flock before nightfall.

   Old creation stories speak of the two-leggeds learning from the four-leggeds.

   Note

   An adjective turned noun, and it never stands alone. It needs a number or type in front, as in two-leggeds or four-leggeds. Unlike most words ending in -ed, it takes a plural -s, which is the clearest sign it has become a noun. Its natural use is sorting creatures by how they stand, with humans counted among the two-leggeds.

5. 5
   SayLEGD/lɛɡd/

   adjective

   Wounded in the leg, especially in the course of a hunt.

   The gamekeeper found a hare legged by the morning's shooting, dragging itself along the field's edge.

   Caught in the trap by the wall, the poacher was legged and could not run from the keepers.

   Similarlame

   Note

   An injury word from the hunt: to be legged is to be hit in the leg, by shot or by trap. It reads most clearly after a verb, as in the hare was legged. Before a noun it slides into the "having legs" meaning. Thomas Holcroft turns it on a person in Anna St. Ives (1792): "Spring guns and man traps have been set for me, and I am legged!"

Showing meanings only. Show all 5