Discussion Groups / English Usage / January 2009

No. I think it is just a different way of referring to the "akimbo" position
of the arms.

OED:

   akimbo, adv. (and a.)

   Of the arms: In a position in which the hands rest on the hips and the
   elbows are turned outwards. Now usu. hyphenless.

We've discussed "akimbo" before, but I'll need to refresh my memory from the
OED.

Etymology:

   [Deriv. unknown. Prof. Skeat (Append.) gives a suggestion of Magnussen,
   comparing the earliest known forms with Icel. keng-boginn, -it, ‘crooked’
   (Vigfusson), lit. ‘bent staple-wise, or in a horse-shoe curve’; other
   suggestions are a cambok in the manner of a crooked stick (ME. cambok,
   med.L. camb{umac}ca, see CAMMOCK); a cam bow in a crooked bow. None of
   these satisfies all conditions.

   The difficulty as to a-cambok, a cam bow, is that no forms of the word
   show cam-, from which the earliest are the most remote. The Icel.
   keng-boginn comes nearer the form, but there is no evidence that it had
   the special sense of a-kimbo, and none that the latter ever had the
   general sense of ‘crooked.’ It also postulates an early Eng. series of
   forms like *keng-bown or *keng-bowed, *keng-bow, *akengbow, quite unknown
   and unaccounted for.]

The earliest quotes are:

   c1400 Beryn 1837 The hoost..set his hond in kenebowe.

   1611 COTGR. s.v. Arcade. To set his hands a kenbow.

   1627 PEACHAM Compl. Gent. (1634) V. xx. 247 The armes of two side-men
   on kenbow.

   1629 GAULE Holy Madnesse 92 With his armes a kemboll.

The opposite.  Think of the arms making triangles from shoulder to hip
with the elbows the furthest point from the body.

Marius Hancu filted:

There's a position that needs no name, because assuming it requires either the
body to be disassembled, or that you use someone else's hips....r