sway·back

(swā′băk′)

Excessive inward or downward curvature of the spine, especially in a horse.

sway′backed′ adj.

American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

ThesaurusAntonymsRelated WordsSynonymsLegend:

Adj.

swaybacked - having abnormal sagging of the spine (especially in horses)

dipped, lordotic, swayback

unfit - not in good physical or mental condition; out of condition; "fat and very unfit"; "certified as unfit for army service"; "drunk and unfit for service"

Mentioned in

References in classic literature

The parlour had once been two rooms, and the floor was swaybacked where the partition had been cut away.

View in context

Swaybacked and sag-bellied, with heavy necks and blocky heads, these bulls have a distinct look--and distinctly bigger antlers.

Measuring Up: How to put the numbers to a big bull's rack

If you've ever seen an old, swaybacked 6-pointer with main beams well outside its ears in an area where bucks must have 8 points to be legal, you understand.

Can You Win Big With Buck Slots?

The fields here spread out to ridges black with deep timber on either side, and what houses there were seemed as errant smudges of civilization on a landscape solitary and kept within a ramshackle accord they had made with the wilderness, as if the swaybacked trailers yarded with dogs and scrap metal and ruined tractors would maintain forever a state of disrepair.

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(80.) See Powell, supra note 63 ("To roam Soulsville, a neighborhood south of downtown Memphis, is to find a place where bungalows and brick homes stand vacant amid azaleas and dogwoods, where roofs are swaybacked and thieves punch holes through walls to strip the copper piping.").

(B)light at the end of the tunnel? How a city's need to fight vacant and abandoned properties gave rise to a law school clinic like no other

To the back were several rusty cars on blocks, a swaybacked barn, and an outbuilding.

The Dirty White Sky

if a skinny, long-legged swaybacked Lab whose head is too big is your idea of fine looking.

Not my babe! A scrawny, overlooked pup becomes an all-purpose retriever ... well, almost

"Tucking requires constant glute and quadricep contractions, creating bulky muscles," says Vogel, while swaybacked dancers are often hypermobile, with overactive spinal extensors, underactive abdominals, and shortened psoas.

The pelvis