gangling
/ˈɡaŋɡlɪŋ
/adjective
(Of a person) tall, thin, and awkward in movements or bearing: a gangling youth with a trace of down on his cheeks...
- Watson was 24, an awkward, gangling American, whose hair, Bill has noted, ‘appears in photographs to be straining to attach itself to some powerful magnet just out of frame’.
- A tall, gangling figure, he simultaneously apologises, flings off his jacket, tells me why his breakfast meeting over-ran and checks his emails, all in a blur of long legs and dark blue suit.
- Yet ‘Little George’, as he is known despite the fact that he is a tall gangling figure, is seen as a new force.
Synonyms
lanky, rangy, wiry, stringy, bony, angular, skinny, skin-and-bones, spindly, spindling, scrawny, thin, spare, gaunt, skeletal, size-zero;
loosely built, loosely jointed;
awkward, uncoordinated, ungainly, gawky, inelegant, graceless, ungraceful
informal like a bag of bones
dated spindle-shanked
Origin
Early 19th century: from the verb gang2 + -le4 + -ing2.