akimbo
/əˈkɪmbəʊ
/adverb
1With hands on the hips and elbows turned outwards: she stood with arms akimbo, frowning at the small boy...
- She briefly imagined his pose: arms akimbo, hips jutting outward in impatience, thick black brows lowered ominously over angry eyes, mouth set in disapproval.
- From these imperatives spring the iconographies and situations that animate this suite: the large sitting figure, the figure standing with its arms akimbo, the man lost in a downpour.
- One client told me that when he asked whether he had been breast-fed, his mother, arms akimbo, warned him off with a glare.
1.1(With reference to limbs) flung out widely or haphazardly: he collapsed on the bed, legs akimbo...
- Dale was in our bedroom, limbs akimbo atop our massive new bed.
- I would have a great time flailing round to this song, limbs akimbo, mouthing all the words.
- Several white-sheeted bodies lay on the ground, limbs akimbo, eyes wildly open, with the look and feel of death permeating the surrounding area.
Origin
Late Middle English: from in kenebowe in Middle English, probably from Old Norse.
You might think that the odd-looking word akimbo, ‘with hands on the hips and elbows turned outwards’, derives from some exotic language. In fact it appeared in medieval English in the form in kenebowe or a kembow and was probably an alteration of an Old Norse phrase meaning ‘bent in a curve, like a horseshoe’.