a. [f. prec. + -ED2.] Having the legs bent inwards so that the knees knock together in walking. (The opposite of bandy-legged.)

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1806.  W. Taylor, in Ann. Rev., IV. 720. Parents, whose children from bad nursing are become knock-kneed.

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1838.  Dickens, O. Twist, xlii. Those long-limbed, knock-kneed, shambling, bony people.

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1862.  Sala, Seven Sons, I. vii. 142. The knock-kneed horse.

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  b.  fig. Halting; feeble.

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1865.  Dickens, Mut. Fr., III. iv. It was constitutionally a knock-knee’d mind.

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1887.  Saintsbury, Hist. Elizab. Lit., i. 5. So stumbling and knock-kneed is his [Wyatt’s] verse.

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1898.  Westm. Gaz., 7 Dec., 4/1. There are no shambling, knock-kneed verses.

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