ricketyadj.

1650 A. Warren Royalist Reform'd 39 Her Midwives either nescience, corruption, or retchlessenesse, which hath hitherto caused many of her Children to grow Ricketty.

1667 J. Yonge Jrnl. (1963) (modernized text) 110 During our being here my brother's only child (a rickety girl) died.

1673 J. Dryden Amboyna ii. i. 21 You of Great Brittaine, as you call it, like a Rickety head, wou'd only swell and grow bigger by it.

1709 J. Floyer Ψυχρολουσια (ed. 3) ii. 257 Either such Children, when grown up, have proved sickly and weak, or their Children been Rickety, King's Evil'd or Consumptive.

c1720 W. Gibson Farriers New Guide ii. v. 225 Bones..not unlike those of Rickety Children.

1776 Philos. Trans. (Royal Soc.) 66 103 On shore they walk quite erect with a waddling motion, like a rickety child.

1835–6 Todd's Cycl. Anat. & Physiol. I. 440/2 The consistence of a ricketty bone is but slightly different from that of common cartilage.

a1859 T. B. Macaulay Hist. Eng. (1861) V. 102 Till he was ten years old..he was never once suffered to stand on his ricketty legs.

1897 T. C. Allbutt et al. Syst. Med. III. 110 The pulmonary diseases to which rickety subjects are extremely prone.

1937 R. Ferguson Lady Rose & Mrs. Memmary v. 107 Her father was a hardworking doctor.., dealing with influenza epidemics, and outbreaks of measles, and rickety babies, and asthmatic old people.

1978 A. Desai Stud. in Park in Games at Twilight (1982) 24 Bag-like women in grey and fawn saris or black borkhas screamed..at children falling into the fountain or racing on rickety legs after the chipmunks and pigeons.

2009 F. R. Frankenburg Vitamin Discov. & Disasters vi. 102 In 1921 Hess..found that mercury vapor quartz lamps and/or sunlight helped rickety rats and rickety children.

a1652 A. Wilson Hist. Great Brit. (1653) 49 He took notice of the swelling Buildings upon new foundations, which he looked upon as a Rickety constitution in the Head of the Kingdom.

1685 J. Crowne Sir Courtly Nice i. 3 A conscience swadled so hard in its Infancy by strict Education..that the weak ricketty thing can endure nothing.

1739 J. Campbell Trav. of Edward Brown 305 I have studied to digest Things as naturally as I could, that..the whole appear a Body of tolerable Symmetry, and not with such Ricketty and unproportionable Limbs as I have sometimes seen in Things of this Nature.

1790 E. Burke Refl. Revol. in France 334 This benevolence, the ricketty offspring of weakness. View more context for this quotation

1812 H. Smith & J. Smith Rejected Addr. 80 The new House of Commons, 'Tis a rickety sort of a bantling I'm told.

1843 T. Carlyle Past & Present iv. iii. 355 Deliver me these rickety perishing souls of infants.

1679 S. Slater Poems ii. 24 Ricketty growth doth never please a mother.

1789 W. Perfect Cases Midwifery (ed. 3) I. 256 She had been subject to rickety affections in her infancy.

1801 Med. & Physical Jrnl. 5 294 Scrophulous and ricketty affections.

1876 J. S. Bristowe Treat. Theory & Pract. Med. ii. vii. 898 These precursory symptoms belong properly to the earlier stages of the rickety process.

1879 St. George's Hosp. Rep. 9 365 Ricketty curvature of legs.

1924 Van Nuys (Calif.) News 16 Dec. 7/1 The breaking down of swine, and the development of rickety symptoms, lameness and paralysis have been found to result from insufficient mineral nutriment.

1738 W. Warburton Divine Legation Moses I. Dedic. p. vii Crude and rickety Notions crampt by Restraint.

1771 T. Smollett Humphry Clinker I. 42 I wish those impertinent fellows, with their ricketty understandings, would keep their advice for those that ask it.

1827 J. Bentham Rationale Judicial Evid. V. ix. iv. v. 345 It is by the swallowing of such potions, that the mind of man is rendered feeble and ricketty.

1863 C. C. Clarke Shakespeare-characters vi. 153 His spirit is so rickety that he cannot trust it alone.

1901 ‘M. Twain’ Let. 10 Sept. (1917) II. 715 The rickety minds of men who envy the criminal his vast notoriety.

1997 L. Berlant Queen of Amer. goes to Washington City ii. 72 It is full of mixed metaphors, pseudoscience, and rickety thinking.

1741 D. Lambert Ordinary of Newgate 11/1 One of the Rooms we furnish'd..with the Addition of two or three rickety old Chairs.

1799 R. Kirwan Geol. Ess. 198 We learn to distinguish decayed ricketty basalts from porous lavas.

1806 J. Beresford Miseries Human Life I. viii. 192 Writing at the same ricketty table with another.

1843 C. J. Lever Jack Hinton iii. 22 We mounted an old-fashioned and ricketty stair.

1869 H. F. Tozer Res. Highlands of Turkey I. 285 The river..is spanned by a long ricketty wooden bridge.

1925 Woman's World (Chicago) Apr. 10/1 This old gate is awfully rickety!

1975 S. King Salem's Lot 5 The boy came out onto the rickety back porch.

2006 A. Summers One Train Later xxii. 282 The restaurant is a small, rickety building constructed of bamboo poles and thatched palm fronds.

1798 Lloyd's Polit. & Mil. Rhapsody (ed. 5) iii. v. 162 Abolish for ever this rickety system, cease to overwhelm a whole nation in debt and taxes.

1850 W. E. Baxter Impressions Central & Southern Europe xi. 183 The rickety empire ruled by Francis Joseph.

1871 E. Sullivan Froth & Dregs ii. 19 The well-known practice of many rickety companies, of reducing necessary working stocks at a ruinous cost.

1919 Manch. Guardian 24 July 3/5 State control of prices is absolutely imperative to prevent our rickety currency depreciating to goodness knows what depths.

1949 Ann. Amer. Acad. Polit. & Social Sci. 263 203/1 They felt they would be doing a favor to American manufacturers by giving their rickety economic system a few years of grace.

1996 Economist 20 July 77/1 Many of these markets have rickety banking systems and arcane rules.

1832 W. Irving Alhambra II. 51 The parrot burst into a fit of dry rickety laughter.

1898 M. Hewlett Forest Lovers ix. 93 She broke now into a rickety canter.

1913 J. G. Frazer Belief in Immortality I. viii. 181 With an unsteady rickety gait the beldame hobbled after her rapidly retreating son.

1994 S. Bellow It all adds Up iii. 146 The train used to make rickety speed..through the backyards of Chicago with their gray wooden porches.

2002 J. Eugenides Middlesex iii. 304 My rickety height and foal's legs gave me the posture of a fashion model.

1841 J. Mills Old Eng. Gentleman I. vi. 115 Let Striver spring all the traps early... Do you see that he does it, for he is very old and rickety.

1894 G. Gissing In Year of Jubilee II. iii. iii. 36 A very rickety old woman draws a certain number of shillings each week, on pretence of cleaning.

1916 W. A. White God's Puppets 238 Beside him was a rickety little old man, with a short breath and a misery in his back.

1953 S. J. Perelman Let. 28 June in Don't tread on Me (1987) 140 Your canard that I might be too old and rickety to consummate that lunch date.

2009 Toronto Sun (Nexis) 7 May 12 I don't condone cyclists who mow down rickety old ladies on city sidewalks.