knarry

comparative more knarry · superlative most knarry

1. obsoleteknotty; gnarled

   The trees were old, and jagg'd, and dark; / With dying moss and knarry bark; / Above, the branches and lighter spray / Like a low and black cloud lay.

   1854, Charles Dickens, “The Lady of The Fen”, in Collection of British Authors: Tauchnitz Edition, Vol. 297; Household Words, volume 23, Leipzig: Bernhard Tauchnitz, page 262

   2 more examples

   If the Gout have been of long standing, and hath often afflicted the Sick; then at length there are generated in the Joynts; hard Knots and Knovs; from the more thick part of the Serous or wheyish humours: At first, no bigger than peas, then as big as Small-Nuts; and afterwards much bigger: And then the Patient will have something (Monstrous) to look at: Not as a wonder for Nine Days; But Durante Vitæ; being then call'd the Knarry Gout, and not easily to be Cured. I give the Challenge to any Gout, (one or two kinds only excepted, being beyond the reach of man, to Cure; in which Case, ease only is given:) Although stubborn, knarry, or of long standing, being not bound precisely to any set time.

   1684, Tho. Ghyles, Gent., A Brief and Plain Description of the Joynt-Sickness: Also, An Introduction, leading exactly to the Cure of the Gout, London, pages 8, 15

   If, at such a time, you were to look through an elf-bore in wood, were a thorter knot (the knarry end of a branch) has been taken out, or through a hold made by an elf-arrow, (which has probably been made by a warble) in the skin of a beast that has been elf-shot, you may see the elf-bull haiging (butting) with the strongest bull or ox in the heard; but you will never see with that eye again.—Many a man has lost his sight in this manner!

   1814, “Rosmer Haf-Mand, or the Mer-Man Rosmer”, in Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, […], Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Co., page 404