leggy

The word 'leggy' is a straightforward modern English compound formed from the noun 'leg' and the adjectival suffix '-y'. The core noun 'leg' entered English from Old Norse 'leggr', displacing the Old English term 'sceanca'. The suffix '-y', with its Germanic origins in Old English '-ig', is commonly used to create descriptive adjectives indicating possession or abundance of a quality. Therefore, 'leggy' literally means "having legs", which semantically narrowed to specifically describe having notably long legs, first applied to people and later extended to describe the elongated, often weak stems of certain plants.

Structure: leg (body part) + gy (adjective suffix) 'leg' is from Middle English 'legge', of Old Norse origin, referring to a limb used for support and movement. 'gy' (represented by the spelling '-y') is a productive English adjective-forming suffix from Old English '-ig', meaning "characterized by; full of; having the quality of".