Latty

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Describing someone or something unusually thin, long and slender, with a lanky, stick-like build
2. Tall and slight in a narrow, gangling way, resembling a thin strip of wood used in construction
3. Having a thin, lanky frame that looks as if it is made of narrow lath-like pieces

Etymology: "Latty" is a word for a wooden strip or lath, and it reached English by way of Switzerland. The source records it as borrowed from Swiss French "latte", the same root that gives the English "lath", but the Swiss French form carries the sense of a strip of wood used in construction. Because the word arrived as a loan from a regional French dialect rather than through the usual route of Old French into Middle English, it stands apart from most English vocabulary of building and carpentry. Its meaning stayed close to the literal strip of timber it named, so the story is one of a practical term crossing a border intact.