spraddle
A manner of walking with the legs spread outA manner of walking with the legs spread out.
Meaning
1 sensesA manner of walking with the legs spread out.
Origin
Uncertain; possibly from sprad, an obsolete dialectal past participle of spread; or a blenUncertain; possibly from sprad, an obsolete dialectal past participle of spread; or a blend of sprawl + straddle or spread + straddle, or perhaps from Middle English *spraddelen; a frequentative form of Middle English spradden, spraden, sprēden (“to lay flat, spread; to distribute, scatter, sow”), from Old English sprǣdan (“to expand, spread; to outspread, stretch forth”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *(s)per- (“to sow, sprinkle, strew”), equivalent to spread + -le. Compare also dialectal Norwegian spradla (“to flail, squirm, thrash about”).
Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0 · source
Dictionary text adapted from Wiktionary (Wiktionary contributors, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Open English WordNet / Princeton WordNet (CC BY 4.0, WordNet License); shared under CC BY-SA 4.0. Example sentences and recordings are credited where they appear.