ppl. a. [f. STRADDLE v. + -ING2.]

1

  1.  That straddles, in the senses of the verb.

2

1592.  Nashe, P. Penilesse, A 3. At length … I lighted vpon an old straddling Usurer.

3

1615.  Crooke, Body of Man, 102. Epiplois postica … diuided into two stradling branches.

4

a. 1652.  Brome, Mad Couple (1653). To Stationer, No stradling Tetrasyllables are brought To fill up room, and little spell, or nought.

5

1679.  Lond. Gaz., No. 1403/4. A Strawberry py’d Gelding,… all his paces, and a stradling gate behind.

6

1765.  H. Walpole, Lett. to Miss Anne Pitt, 25 Dec. May the chimney be widened, without which it can never be a French chimney, which is always very low and straddling?

7

1831.  Youatt, Horse, x. 165. [In anchylosis] the horse … has a curious straddling action.

8

1848.  Dickens, Haunted Man, i. 9. The shadows … making … the very tongs upon the hearth, a straddling giant with his arms a-kimbo.

9

1875.  Knight, Dict. Mech., Straddling (Vehicle), applied to spokes when they are arranged alternately in two circles in the hub. Also said to be staggered.

10

  2.  Bot. Divaricate.

11

1796.  Withering, Brit. Plants (ed. 3), I. 84. Straddling (divaricatus) branches standing wide from each other. Ibid., II. 26. Bulbs straight, not much straddling.

12

1825.  Greenhouse Comp., II. 25. Malva divaricata, stradaling Mallow.

13

  Comb.  1822.  Hortus Angl., II. 399. Straddling-branched Star Wort.

14