Word.ws English Dictionary

make a leg

make a leg verb: to make a deep bow with the right leg drawn back.

Verb

make a leg (third-person singular simple present makes a leg, present participle making a leg, simple past and past participle made a leg)

  1. (UK, idiomatic) To make a deep bow with the right leg drawn back.
    • King Richard II: What must the king do now? must he submit? […]
      What says King Bolingbroke? will his majesty
      Give Richard leave to live till Richard die?
      You make a leg, and Bolingbroke says ay.1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...
    • "I beg pardon," said Mr. Datchery, making a leg with his hat under his arm, as he addressed himself equally to both gentlemen.1870 April–September, Charles Dickens, chapter 18, in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, London: Chapman and Hall, […], published 1870, →OCLC
    Synonyms:
    bow and scrape

Synonyms of make a leg

Forms of make a leg

third-person singular presentmakes a leg
present participlemaking a leg
past participlemade a leg
pastmade a leg

Questions about make a leg

What does make a leg mean?
Make a leg means to make a deep bow with the right leg drawn back.
What part of speech is make a leg?
Make a leg is a verb.
What is the past tense of make a leg?
The past tense of make a leg is made a leg.

Words near make a leg in the dictionary

  1. make a habit of
  2. make a hash of
  3. make a hole
  4. make a joke of
  5. make a killing
  6. make a leg
  7. make a light
  8. make a lip
  9. make a living
  10. make a long arm
  11. make a mark

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: make a leg (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-make a leg.ogg.

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