Definition of "akimbo" []

• In or into a position in which the hands are on the hips and the elbows are bowed outward: children standing akimbo by the fence. (adverb)
• Placed in such a way as to have the hands on the hips and the elbows bowed outward: children standing with arms akimbo. (adjective)
• Being in a bent, bowed, or arched position: "There he remained, dead to the world, limbs akimbo, until we left” ( Alex Shoumatoff). (adjective)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "It was in one of these that our word akimbo unexpectedly appeared more than 200 years earlier than the next citation in the 1600s."
• "The word akimbo is at least 600 years old and one source points to a literal meaning of "a keen bow" meaning"
• "Perhaps this post on Walter Guthrie as an Archaeopteryx in akimbo. moon said ..."