piano legn.

1852 Sci. Amer. 8 May 265/2 This lathe is for producing either irregular or symmetrical polygonic forms, and is peculiarly adapted to making bed-posts, newel posts, banisters, piano legs, and such articles.

1875 Bucks County (Pa.) Gaz. 7 Oct. Col. Olcott..brought out two English walnuts, and asked the spirits to crack their shells under the piano legs without crushing the kernels.

1939 Times 16 Aug. 8/1 Have we not been told, time and time again, of that Victorian usage of draping the piano legs against unseemly revealment!

2001 W. Van Draanen Flipped 47 The snake wrapped itself around the piano leg about three times.

1855 M. J. Holmes Eng. Orphans vii. 74 Yours are as big as stone-boats, any day, and your ankles are just the size of the piano legs.

1893 Daily News 7 July 11/2 The sight of another matron with a large waist, a short dress, and piano-leg calves, will change me from a woman into a fiend.]

1894 Daily Advocate (Newark, Ohio) 7 Jan. 7/4 These tapestries,..showing people with peculiar enlargements..and sweet little nude boys with piano legs.

1912 D. G. Phillips Price she Paid viii. 300 You may remember what heavy legs I had—piano-legs.

a1969 J. Kerouac Visions of Cody (1972) 21 The old ladies have piano legs and have to waddle to their where-to.

1990 J. Updike Rabbit at Rest i. 148 These Jewish women tend to have piano legs, and low hips.