Word of the Day:
rickety
What It Means
Of an object: not strong or sturdy, as because of poor construction or upkeep; not safe or secure.
Feeble in the joints; tottering.
Affected with or suffering from rickets; rachitic.
He hesitated about climbing such a small, rickety ladder.
Rickety in Context
“She now knew every article Mrs Dibble had to sell, and the large part of the stock that was unsaleable by reason of its damaged state. Customers turned away from rickety chairs, stands of drawers that refused to open, or had no handles, lop-sided wardrobes whose doors were out of plumb or whose...”
Did You Know?
From dialectal ricket (“unstable, rickety”) + -y, and/or ricket (“to move noisily and in a reckless way”) + -y. Alternatively, and perhaps less likely, from rickets + -y.
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: rickety (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “rickety.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/rickety. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
