a.
1. So deep as to reach to the knee. Said of water, snow, mud, grass, etc.; also of the ground submerged or covered by these.
1535. Stewart, Cron. Scot., II. 619. In wynter in ane kne deip snaw.
1555. Eden, Decades, 116. They make a hole in the earth knee deape.
1647. H. More, Insomn. Philos., xii. Great fields of Corn and Knee-deep grasse were seen.
1748. Anson’s Voy., II. iv. 160. Her decks were almost constantly knee-deep in water.
1862. Beveridge, Hist. India, III. VII. v. 148. Rice fields and plains knee-deep in water.
2. Sunk to the knee (in water, mud, etc.). Also fig.
c. 1400. Sege Jerus. (E.E.T.S.), 32/573. Kne-depe in þe dale, dascheden stedes.
1611. Shaks., Wint. T., I. ii. 186. Ynch-thick, knee-deepe; ore head and eares a fork’d one.
1646. Evance, Noble Ord., 42. Wee have bin but anckle-deepe in the one, but wee have bin knee-deepe in the other.
1721. Amherst, Terræ Filius, No. 48 (1754), 256. To keep his court knee-deep in a bog.
1862. Mrs. H. Wood, Mrs. Hallib., II. ix. 194. Half the women round us are knee-deep in Bankes’s books.
1895. Suffling, Land of Broads, 51. Hundreds of oxen … standing knee-deep in the cool water.
