Meanings
- historicalHaving wide legs and reaching below the knees but higher than the ankles (not tied or closed at the knees).
He had on no Cloaths, but a Seaman’s Wastcoat, a Pair of open-knee’d Linnen Drawers, and a blew Linnen Shirt; but nothing to direct me so much as to guess what Nation he was of […]
1719 May 6 (Gregorian calendar), [Daniel Defoe], The Life and Strange Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, […], London: […] W[illiam] Taylor […], →OCLC, page 2231 more example
1703, Politica (pseudonym), The Levellers: A Dialogue between Two Young Ladies, concerning Matrimony, London: J. How, in The Harleian Miscellany, London: Robert Dutton, 1811, Volume 12, p. 213, The coat-sleeves were gloriously cut and slashed, small buttons on the coat, a little bigger than pease; the pockets about a handful below the knees, the breeches were open-kneed, a great deal wider than a Flanderkin’s trousers, hung all around with abundance of little ribbons.
Cite this entry
open-kneed. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 3, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/open-kneed
“open-kneed.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/open-kneed. Accessed November 3, 2026.
WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “open-kneed,” accessed November 3, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/open-kneed.
Source: open-kneed on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.