Word.ws English Dictionary

sharp-elbowed

sharp-elbowed adjective: possessing narrow, bony, rather pointed elbows.

Adjective

sharp-elbowed (not generally comparable, comparative more sharp-elbowed, superlative most sharp-elbowed)

  1. (not comparable, usually) Possessing narrow, bony, rather pointed elbows.
    • […] dire faces, figures dire,
      Sharp-knee'd, sharp-elbowed, and lean-ankled too1802, William Wordsworth, The Pedlar
    • —Go to the Bible!—said a sharp voice from a sharp-faced, sharp-eyed, sharp-elbowed, strenuous-looking woman in a black dress.1882, Oliver Wendell Holmes, chapter 1, in The Professor at the Breakfast Table
  2. (figuratively, informal, not comparable, usually) Pushy; having a boldly assertive manner intended to establish an advantage.
    • sharp-elbowed parents
    • No sooner had President Washington been sworn in, wearing mousy, egalitarian brown broadcloth, than the sharp-elbowed jockeying for social status began.1977 October 24, Michael and Ariane Batterberry, “Party Politics”, in New York, page 81

Examples of sharp-elbowed in a sentence

  • With his stocky build, spread-collar shirts and locker-room charm, Walter Yetnikoff fit right in among the sharp-elbowed power brokers in the music business.1990 September 17, Richard Behar, “A Music King's Shattering Fall”, in Time, retrieved 28 Jun 2015:
  • Fifteen documentaries are in sharp-elbowed competition to be among the five Oscar nominees.2014 December 4, Brooks Barnes, Michael Cieply, “Documentaries Jostle Against Oscar Obscurity”, in New York Times, retrieved 28 Jun 2015:
  • In this imagined reality, sharp-elbowed parents are handed ‘golden tickets’ for endless support.2024 January 7, John Harris, “As councils crumble, a new scapegoat has been found: the parents of disabled and vulnerable children”, in The...

Forms of sharp-elbowed

comparativemore sharp-elbowed
superlativemost sharp-elbowed

Questions about sharp-elbowed

What does sharp-elbowed mean?
Sharp-elbowed means possessing narrow, bony, rather pointed elbows.
How do you use sharp-elbowed in a sentence?
With his stocky build, spread-collar shirts and locker-room charm, Walter Yetnikoff fit right in among the sharp-elbowed power brokers in the music business.
What part of speech is sharp-elbowed?
Sharp-elbowed is an adjective.

Words near sharp-elbowed in the dictionary

  1. Sharp's syndrome
  2. sharp-and-a-half
  3. sharp-beaked ground finch
  4. sharp-cornered
  5. sharp-edged
  6. sharp-elbowed
  7. sharp-eyed
  8. sharp-long
  9. sharp-nosed
  10. sharp-pointed
  11. sharp-set

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sharp-elbowed (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-sharp-elbowed.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sharp-elbowed.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sharp-elbowed. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.