Word
legged
/ˈɫɛɡd/
Definition
adj. used with a number or a word to describe the legs of a person, animal, or piece of furniture.
adj. used in combination to form compound adjectives describing the quantity, quality, or appearance of legs.
Examples
“A spider is an eight-legged creature.”
“The old wooden table was a sturdy, three-legged piece of furniture that fit perfectly in the corner.”
“Biologists observed that the long-legged wading birds were better adapted to hunting in the deeper sections of the marsh than their shorter-limbed counterparts.”
Examples
simple
“A spider is an eight-legged creature.”
contextual
“The old wooden table was a sturdy, three-legged piece of furniture that fit perfectly in the corner.”
complex
“Biologists observed that the long-legged wading birds were better adapted to hunting in the deeper sections of the marsh than their shorter-limbed counterparts.”
Usage
Almost always used as the second part of a hyphenated compound adjective, such as 'long-legged' or 'four-legged'.
Pitfall
It was a four-leg table.
It was a four-legged table.
When describing an object by the number of legs it has, use the '-legged' form as an adjective before the noun.
Etymology
From Middle English legged, leggyd, equivalent to leg (“noun”) + -ed.
From leg (“verb”) + -ed.
Etymology adapted from Wiktionary, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Scan code
englishreference.com/q/legged