Word.ws English Dictionary

tailorwise

tailorwise adverb: with the legs crossed in front of one and the ankles on the ground.

tailorwise: with the legs crossed in front of one and the ankles on the ground
Image: Chi Chang Wu, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adverb

tailorwise (not comparable)

  1. With the legs crossed in front of one and the ankles on the ground.
    • Underneath this, when he had a job, my gentleman sat withinside tailor-wise and busily stitching.1889, Robert Louis Stevenson, The Master of Ballantrae
    • While sitting on a chair or bench there is no difficulty in holding the trunk erect, because now the hamstring muscles are not only relaxed but further slackened at the lower end by flexion of the knee; the hips will flex several degrees farther here and also in sitting on the floor if the knees...1923, Wilbur Pardon Bowen, Applied Anatomy and Kinesiology, page 170

Examples of tailorwise in a sentence

  • His shoes off, and his bare feet tucked under his legs, he sat tailorwise and peered up at the giant.2012, Max Brand, The Garden of Eden, page 101:
  • Perched tailorwise on the bed, I myself stared like an owl into the gloom.2014, Peter De Vries, The Tunnel of Love, page 126:

Synonyms of tailorwise

Origin of tailorwise

From tailor + -wise, referring to the traditional working posture of tailors. Compare tailor-fashion, tailor's bunion, tailor's muscle and tailor-style.

Questions about tailorwise

What does tailorwise mean?
Tailorwise means with the legs crossed in front of one and the ankles on the ground.
How do you use tailorwise in a sentence?
His shoes off, and his bare feet tucked under his legs, he sat tailorwise and peered up at the giant.
What part of speech is tailorwise?
Tailorwise is an adverb.

Words near tailorwise in the dictionary

  1. tailors' chalks
  2. tailors' dummies
  3. tailors' hams
  4. tailorship
  5. tailorships
  6. tailorwise
  7. tailory
  8. tailour
  9. tailours
  10. tailout
  11. tailouts

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: tailorwise (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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Cite this entry: “tailorwise.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/tailorwise. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.