wing-footed

English

Alternative forms

• wingfooted

Adjective

wing-footed (comparative more wing-footed, superlative most wing-footed)

1. Having wings on the feet; very fast.
   • 1590, Edmund Spenser, “(please specify the book)”, in The Faerie Queene. […], London: […] [John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, →OCLC:

     And his wingfooted coursers him did beare / So fast away that, ere his readie speare / He could advance, he farre was gone and past […].

   • 1918, W. B. Yeats, “Per Amica Silentia Lunae”, in Mythologies, New York: Macmillan, published 1959, page 332:

     He only can create the greatest imaginable beauty who has endured all imaginable pangs, for only when we have seen and foreseen what we dread shall we be rewarded by that dazzling, unforeseen, wing-footed wanderer.

   • 1958, Ovid, translated by Horace Gregory, The Metamorphoses, New York: Viking, Book XI, p. 307:

     In due time she gave birth to Autolycus, / A son of Mercury, wing-footed, as if born / With all his father's cleverness and speed, / He made white look like black and black like white.