web footn.

1679 T. Kirke Mod. Acct. Scotl. 4 There is one sort of ravenous Fowl amongst them that has one web foot, one foot suited for Land, and another for Water.

1765 Museum Rusticum 4 lxxv. 325 (note) It was common to say a fenman was an amphibious creature; and that their children were born with web-feet.

1777 T. Pennant Brit. Zool. (ed. 4, quarto) IV. v. 5 This is among the species taken notice of by Aristotle on account of the broad feet, which, he says, assist them in swimming: as web-feet do the water-fowl.

1802 W. Paley Nat. Theol. xv. 292 In the swan; the web foot, the spoon bill, the long neck,..bear all a relation to one another.

1884 J. Tait Mind in Matter 47 If it dive, it will generally have a hull-shaped body, short legs, and web-feet.

1953 K. M. Briggs Personnel of Fairyland (1969) Gloss. 189 She [sc. the banshee] is no beauty, for she has only one nostril, a large, starting-out front tooth, and web feet.

2007 Herald Sun (Austral.) (Nexis) 21 Sept. 15 The ducks preened their long necks, stood on tippy-toed yellow web feet, and took centre stage as a procession approached.

1885 Sc. Church Aug. 201 The digestion of a webfoot—including even the domestic duck—is the activest and perfectest thing of the kind of which we have any knowledge.

1909 Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang. Webfoot,..2. any web-footed bird or other animal.

1956 Billboard 28 Apr. 1/2 Walt Disney's famed webfoot, Donald Duck.

2011 Times Colonist (Victoria, Brit. Columbia) (Nexis) 23 Apr. e5 Her four ducks.., each webfoot capable of producing about 300 eggs every year.

1765 Museum Rusticum 4 lxxv. 325 I would fain rouse up the spirits of some of my brother webfeet.

1976 J. W. Day Norwich through Ages 7 The Norfolkers despised them as yellow-bellied webfoots, cunning as rats and shaking with ague.

1994 H. Harrison One King's Way 422 He struck like a ploughboy, like a churl, like a webfoot from the fen.

1845 W. Whitman in Amer. Speech (1961) 36 297 Oregonese [are called] Webfoots.

1873 J. H. Beadle Undeveloped West xxxv. 759 Everybody and everything we saw had the unmistakable ‘Oregon look’. We were among the ‘Web-feet’ at last, and a comely race they are.

1940 Oregon: End of Trail (Federal Writers' Project) Pref. p. viii He will even..find merit in the long winter of dismal skies and warm but chilling rains, calling himself a ‘webfoot’ and stoutly proclaiming that he likes it.

2015 Spokesman Rev. (Spokane, Washington) (Nexis) 11 Jan. c3 Many of the Webfoots' progeny migrated west of the Cascades and settled in the Willamette Valley in the 1840s.

1846 Spirit of Times 6 June 177/1 The drilling of ‘Uncle Samuel's’ ‘web feet’, or ‘barnacle backs’.

1863 A. Lincoln Let. 16 Aug. in War Policy of Admin. 5 Nor must Uncle Sam's web-feet be forgotten. At all the watery margins they have been present.

1883 Internal Revenue Rec. 15 Oct. 335/1 The Army officers nearly died of laughter at seeing the ‘web feet’ drilling in the school of the soldier.

1916 Boston City Club Bull. Jan. 42 Colonel Harry LeRoy Hawthorne..graduated a cadet engineer in the United States Navy, ceased to be a web-foot and went into an artillery regiment.

1949 Washington Post 27 Jan. 10/7 I regretted to see..a full page picture of midshipmen marching in the inaugural parade, whereas you had only a small picture of the West Point Cadets, whose marching precision is far superior to that of the ‘web feet’.

1866 C. H. Smith Bill Arp, so Called 115 If we are to be whipped at all, then the infantry, which is to say the web-feet, are to be whipped first.

1867 B. W. Duke Hist. Morgan's Cavalry xiv. 400 When the ‘web-feet’ called us ‘buttermilk rangers’, we did not get angry with them.

1917 J. Morgan Recoll. Rebel Reefer 210 I was only a poor ‘webfoot’.

1973 R. M. Utley Frontier Regulars (1984) v. 76 Rifle and canteen completed the ‘web-foot’ outfit.

2002 B. I. Wiley in M. Barton & L. M. Logue Civil War Soldier i. 22 Antipathy of cavalry toward infantry was inconsiderable, though the former did apply to the latter the uncomplimentary term of ‘web feet’.