AnatomyFilter: What word am I trying to remember?

February 4, 2009 7:09 AM

Is there a name for this kind of leg? Specifically, in mammals or birds? I swear I once read an article discussing typical folkloric drawings of the Devil wherein he was described as having the ________ legs of a goat. Google and Wikipedia have failed me, as have my well-educated friends. I'm starting to wonder if I never actually read the article, and perhaps it was some kind of vivid, reading dream.
posted by johnbaskerville to writing & language (16 comments total)

Hind legs?
posted by Happy Dave at 7:12 AM on February 4

Your "this" link does not work for me. But here is an image of a Minotaur showing - what I guess I would also call "hind legs".
posted by rongorongo at 7:16 AM on February 4

I mean to say that the word refers to the different structure of the leg and not its placement. Sorry about the link; no hot-linking, I guess.
posted by johnbaskerville at 7:18 AM on February 4

I think perhaps "hindlimb" is the more technical term if you want to search for links on physiology.
posted by rongorongo at 7:21 AM on February 4

It's a hock joint - or "the tarsal joint of the hind leg of hoofed mammals; corresponds to the human ankle."

So you could perhaps say it's a hocked leg of a goat, or a hock-jointed leg of a goat.
posted by yeti at 7:25 AM on February 4

Unguligrade. But the thing about the Devil makes me think you're remembering the phrase "cloven-hoofed", which'd be something somewhat different I think.
posted by edd at 7:26 AM on February 4

Yeti's got it. The work is hock. Sickle-hocked. Thanks!
posted by johnbaskerville at 7:27 AM on February 4

Well, this doesn't refer to the legs so much as the ends of them, but the devil is often described as being cloven hoofed, like a goat.
posted by Jupiter Jones at 7:27 AM on February 4

In horses and many four-legged animals (and even some birds), what looks to us like a knee going backwards is actually an ankle (the knee is held close to the body), and the small part above the hoof that curves forward again is the fetlock.

So, I first thought "fetlocks" were what you were looking for, but that doesn't really work for the entire leg, just that small part. So now I am going nuts, too, because I thought there was a name for legs like this, too! The closest I have been able to come in my mind is "reticulated" which suggests rear-facing to me, though why I can't say, since reticulated seems to mean simply joined together.
posted by misha at 8:04 AM on February 4

On preview, thank goodness someone else found a better answer, so now I can sleep, too!
posted by misha at 8:05 AM on February 4

I have to disagree with all of you. There is a better word for this, and at present, it escapes me, but I am going to find it.
posted by Freen at 10:43 AM on February 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

Digitigrade. Whew. That's the ticket.
posted by Freen at 10:51 AM on February 4 [1 favorite has favorites]

Cloven-hooved animals (and mythological personifications of evil) don't have digits, though.
posted by Thoughtcrime at 11:48 AM on February 4

Freen: Follow the link in the wikipedia article for digitigrade through to unguligrades as I posted above - you'll see cattle are listed there as well as goats. So in this case it isn't digitigrade - which would be more like a pawed animal than one with cloven hoofs.
posted by edd at 4:59 PM on February 4

Freen has it. You mean where the "heel" sticks out like this? Instead of being down on the ground like ours? The part that goes in the devil's shoe, hoof or paw, doesn't matter?
posted by Lesser Shrew at 7:12 PM on February 4

edd: Awesome. These are all such fantastic words.
posted by Freen at 11:40 AM on February 5