spindleshanks

   Applied to a person with long, thin legs since the sixteenth century, and still in playground use, according to the Opies in The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren. They list the synonymous: Spindle Dick, Spindle legs, and Spindle sticks. These terms are always disparaging, as Colleen McCullough indicates in An Indecent Obsession. The man who says: ‘Don’t you preach at me, spindleshanks!’ to another man snarls the words.

   Other words which may be used as taunting terms of address to very thin people include: Bag o’ bones, Bean pole, Broomstick, Fusewire, Hairpin, Lamp-post, Lanky Liz, Lanky Panky, Matchstick, Needle legs, Pipe Cleaner, Rake or Raky, Razor blade, Rib skin, Scarecrow, Scraggy, Skin and bones, Skinny, Skinflint, Skinny guts, Skinny Dick, Taper, Thinima, Tin ribs.