gangling
pronunciation
How to pronounce gangling in British English:
UK [ˈgæŋglɪŋ]
How to pronounce gangling in American English:
US [ˈɡæŋɡlɪŋ]
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- Adjective:
- tall and thin and having long slender limbs
- ungracefully tall and thin
Word Origin
- gangling (adj.)
- "long and loose-jointed," by 1812, from Scottish and Northern English gang (v.) "to walk, go," which is a survival of Old English gangan, which is related to gang (n.). The form of the word is that of a present-participle adjective from a frequentative verb (as in fondling, trampling), but no intermediate forms are known. The sense extension would seem to be via some notion involving looseness in walking. GANGLING. Tall, slender, delicate, generally applied to plants. Warw. [James O. Halliwell, "A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words," 1846]
Example
- 1. The gangling kid transformed almost overnight into a handsome young man .
- 2. From a gangling boy he had grown into an elegant young man .
- 3. A gangling adolescent transformed into a handsome adult ;
- 4. Rawboned suggests a thin , bony , gangling build .
- 5. A gangling teenager ; a lanky kid transformed almost overnight into a handsome young man .