ppl. a. [CROSS- 11.] Having the legs crossed (usually of a person in a sitting posture).
c. 1530. Ld. Berners, Arth. Lyt. Bryt. (1814), 252. Some sytting before their owne dores, croslegged.
1697. Dampier, Voy. (1698), I. xii. 329. They use no Chairs, but sit cross-legg’d like Taylors on the floor.
1867. Whittier, Tent on Beach, xiv. In the tent-shade … [He] Smoked, cross-legged like a Turk, in Oriental calm.
b. Having one leg laid across the other.
1631. Weever, Anc. Fun. Mon., 274. An armed knight crosse legged is to bee seene.
1762–71. H. Walpole, Vertue’s Anecd. Paint. (1786), IV. 207. Bishops in cumbent attitudes and cross-legged templars.
1850. W. D. Cooper, Hist. Winchelsea, 132. Canopied tombs of cross-legged secular warriors.
In this sense sometimes Crossed-legged.
1845. G. A. Poole, Churches, xii. 118, note. All these figures of crossed-legged persons have been popularly referred to Templars.
1864. Boutell, Heraldry Hist. & Pop., ix. (ed. 3), 54. The shield of a crossed-legged knight in the Temple Church.
Hence Cross-leggedness, nonce-wd.
1852. G. W. Curtis, Wand. Syria, 236. He naturally fell into the cross-leggedness of oriental sitting.
