stringy

comparative stringier · superlative stringiest

1. Composed of, or resembling, string or strings.
2. Tough to the bite, as containing too much sinew or string tissue.

   The meat was quite stringy.

3. Wiry, lean, scrawny.

   "I know, I know," said the man who had been addressed as Peeble, a nervous, stringy, dried-up person as he now appeared in the light.

   1925 July – 1926 May, A[rthur] Conan Doyle, “(please specify the chapter number)”, in The Land of Mist (eBook no. 0601351h.html), Australia: Project Gutenberg Australia, published April 2019

   1 more example

   The colonel and his sponsor made a queer contrast: Greystone [the sponsor] long and stringy, with a face that seemed as if a cold wind was eternally playing on it.

   1908, W[illiam] B[lair] M[orton] Ferguson, chapter I, in Zollenstein, New York, N.Y.: D. Appleton & Company, →OCLC

4. informalcomputingResembling or involving text strings.

   The context refers to how you use an expression. You've actually already seen some contextual operations with numbers and strings. When you do numbery sorts of things, you get numeric results. When you do stringy sorts of things, you get string results.

   2011, Randal L. Schwartz, brian d foy, Tom Phoenix, Learning Perl, page 56

5. biologyOf a sighting, unlikely to be accurate; probably based on a misidentification, whether innocent or deliberate.

   There are few birders who have not had stringy ticks on their lists at some stage.

   1980, Bill Oddie, Bill Oddie's Little Black Bird Book, page 76

   1 more example

   That was how I dipped out on a Tree Pipit! Which, of course, balanced up the stringy Hawfinch, so fair enough.

   1983, Bill Oddie, Gone Birding, London: Methuen, page 27