crow's foot

plural crow's feet · plural crows' feet · alternative crow's-foot · alternative crowsfoot

1. plural normallyA small wrinkle in the corner of an eye, emblematic of aging.

   The Food and Drug Administration says it's an effective temporary treatment for crow's feet, the wrinkles that form next to aging eyes.

   2013 September 11, Kim Painter, “New wrinkle: Botox approved to treat crow's feet”, in USA Today

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   You must get a brown gown, and a white apron, and a mob cap, and we must make you a few wrinkles, and a little of the crowsfoot at the corner of your eyes, and you will be a very proper, little old woman.

   1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter XV, in Mansfield Park: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, pages 305–306

2. businessA triangular embroidery stitch.
3. computingA symbol, resembling a bisected equilateral triangle, used in database diagrams to indicate plurality.

   The crow's-foot notation similarly represents relationships.

   1999, Robert J Muller, Database Design for Smarties

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   Each crow's foot in your ER diagram indicates the need for a foreign key.

   2007, Geoff Coffey, Susan Prosser, Filemaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual

4. A number of lines rove through a long wooden block, supporting the backbone of an awning horizontally.
5. A caltrop.
6. A device for supporting a tripod to prevent the legs from slipping.

   My foreman with his faked assistant had littered the place with all my apparatus, my bellbox, my crowsfoot, the V-drills, the rods, and the weight, but Malone insisted that we disregard all that and descend ourselves to the lowest level.

   1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed

7. Certain flowering plants
   1. especially, in genus Ranunculus