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AKIMBO,
in a bent position. (C. and E.) In the Tale of Beryn, ed.
Furnivall, oddly spelt in kenebowe; 'The host...set his hond in kenebowe;'
l. 1838 (l. 1105 in Urry). Dryden uses kimbo as an adj. in
the sense of 'bent,' 'curved.' 'The kimbo handles seem with
bears-foot carved;' Virgil, Ecl. 3. α. It is clear that
in kenebowe,
lit. in a sharp curve, is a corruption, because kene in M.E. is not used to
denote 'sharp' in such a context. Also in is here a translation of
the older form on, of which a is a shortened form (through the intermediate form
an). β. Again, we may feel tolerably certain that the right word, in
place of kene, is the M.E. cam or kam, of Celtic origin (W.
cam, crooked);
which is sometimes attenuated to kim, as in the reduplicated phrase kim-kam,
used by Holland to signify 'all awry.' Hence akimbo stands for
on-kimbow,
and that again for on-kam-bow, i.e. lit. 'in a bend bend.' γ. The
last syllable is, in fact, superfluous, and only repeats the sense of the second
one. This is quite a habit of the E. language, which abounds in
words of this character, especially in place-names. Thus
Derwentwater means 'white water water,' luke-warm means 'warm warm,' and so
on. The addition of the E. bow was a necessary consequence of the W.
cam not being well understood. Cf. Gael. camag, anything curved, a
bent stick; Scot. cammock, a bent stick; Irish camog, a twist or winding, a
curve; camlorgain, a bandy leg, &c. [†]
ADDENDA
Possibly (E. and
Scand.), the prefix a- being the common E. prefix marked A-
(2). Mr. E. Magnusson has kindly given me a probable solution of the
word. Starting from the M.E. phrase in kenebowe, which may be
considered to represent in kenbowe, he compares this with Icel. keng-boginn,
crooked, bent into a crook, compounded of Icel. kengr, a crook, a staple,
bend, bight, and boginn, pp. of the lost strong verb bjúga, to
bow, just as A.S. bogen is the pp. of bugan; see Bow (1). The Icel.
kengr is allied to Swed. kink, a twist in a rope, mod. E. kink; see
Kink. Note the phrase
beygði kenginn, i.e. he bent the staple, Edda,
ii. 285. Cf. Norweg. kink, a bend, kjeng, a staple, kinkutt,
crooked, bowed. β. Thus kimbo (for kin-bo, M.E.
kenbowe) is, in
fact, kink-bowed, bent into a staple-like form. Hence Dryden well
uses it to express the curved handles of a cup, translating the Lat. ansa,
Virgil, Ecl. iii. 45. To place the arms akimbo is to place them with
the back of the knuckles against the side, so that the elbows stick out like the
handle of a jug. I may here add that Richardson actually uses kembo
as a verb. 'Oons, madam, said he, and he kemboed his arms, and
strutted up to me... "Kemboed arms! my lord, are you not sorry for such an
air?"' Sir C. Grandison, ed. 1812, iv. 288, 290
(Davies). γ. Yet it must be confessed that even this ingenious
solution is not altogether satisfactory; it hardly explains how in came to be a
part of the M.E. phrase. Wedgwood points out that Cotgrave, s.v.
quarrer [not quarrir] has 'to carry his armes akemboll,' and, s.v.
anse, has les
bras courbez en anse, with armes akemboll.' He seems to take
akemboll to be the older form, but we have no proof of this, as the M.E.
spelling is in kenebowe. I fear the word remains unsolved, for lack
of sufficient data.
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