scarecrowing

Verb

scarecrow (third-person singular simple present scarecrows, present participle scarecrowing, simple past and past participle scarecrowed)

1. (transitive) To cause (a person, their body, etc.) to look awkward and stiff, like a scarecrow (noun sense 1).
   • It felt as though the house could keep disgorging debris forever, a tidal wave of unmatched slippers and dresses scarecrowed on hangers, and after sifting through it all we would still know nothing.1993, Jeffrey Eugenides, chapter 5, in The Virgin Suicides, New York, N.Y.: Picador, →ISBN, page 224
   1. (transitive) To splay (one's arms) away from the body, like the arms of a scarecrow.
      • With his stiff, awkward body, his knees bent, his arms scarecrowed far to either side, he had acted it all out, had been Adam trembling in the garden of his lost innocence, Moses on Sinai, Jahweh creating the heavens and the earth; […]1958 February 17, Frederick Buechner, chapter I, in The Return of Ansel Gibbs, New York, N.Y.: Alfred A[braham] Knopf, published April 1958, →OCLC, page 14
2. (transitive) To frighten or terrify (someone or something), as if using a scarecrow.
   • [T]hat old acquaintance, […] is neither lullabied with thy sweete Papp, nor ſcarre-crowed with thy ſower hatchet.1593, Gabriell Haruey [i.e., Gabriel Harvey], “An Advertisement for Pap-hatchet, and Martin Mar-prelate”, in Pierces Supererogation: Or A New Prayse of the Old Asse. A Preparative to Certaine Larger...
3. (archaic, transitive) To spoil the appearance of (something, such as the landscape or a view), as scarecrows may be regarded as doing.
   • Fatigued and hungry as our party were after a long drive through the desolate region of malaria, wild buffaloes, wild birds, and yet wilder specimens of the human race, which here and there scare-crow the broad, sadly picturesque expanse between the last cork-trees near Salerno, and the treeless...1853 October, “Pike, Salmon, Silurus, Herring, and Company. Esox or Pike.”, in Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country, volume XLVIII, number CCLXXXVI, London: John W[illiam] Parker and Son, […]...

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