pigeon-breasted

Four pigeon-breasted retainers in plain clothes stand in line in the hall.

Our Mutual Friend 2004

The colour had changed, and the broad-chested, square-framed, pot-bellied, and portly old bully-boy of the woods had become a wretched pigeon-breasted, lean — flanked, shrunk-linibed, hungry-looking beggar.

Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo 2003

Like tailors 'dummies they were headless; and like tailors' dummies they had a handsome unnecessary humpiness in the shoulders, and a pigeon-breasted protuberance of chest; but barring this, they were not much more like a human figure than any automatic machine at a station that is about the human height.

The Father Brown Omnibus Chesterton, G. K. 2003

But selection has not tended to make the duck elegant, or "pigeon-breasted"; it has enlarged the abdominal sack instead, besides allowing the addition of an extra rib in various cases.

Are the Effects of Use and Disuse Inherited? An Examination of the View Held by Spencer and Darwin

In Kleber's square I saw the conqueror of Heliopolis, excessively pigeon-breasted, dangling his sabre over a cowering little figure of Egypt, and looking around in amazement at the neighboring windows: in fact, Kleber began his career as an architect, and there were solecisms in the surrounding structure to have turned a better balanced head than his.

Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 12, No. 31, October, 1873 Various

"I reckon I wouldn't git pigeon-breasted with pride over it -- nossir!"

How Janice Day Won Helen Beecher Long

"Farmin 'is kind of poor business for a woman; but I do hope, Mirandy, you ain't a-goin' to marry that poor, pigeon-breasted, peddlin 'cretur that's hangin' round here."

Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 Various

All the gentlemen were very pigeon-breasted and very blue about the beards, and all the ladies were miraculous figures; and all the ladies and all the gentlemen were looking intensely nowhere, and staring with extraordinary earnestness at nothing.

Ten Girls from Dickens Kate Dickinson Sweetser

Like tailors 'dummies they were headless; and like tailors' dummies they had a handsome unnecessary humpiness in the shoulders, and a pigeon-breasted protuberance of chest; but barring this, they were not much more like a human figure than any automatic machine at a station that is about the human height.

The Innocence of Father Brown: The Invisible Man Gilbert Keith 1911

Ernest Gregory he was called, and few thought he'd make old bones, for the young man was pigeon-breasted and high-coloured and coughed

The Torch and Other Tales Eden Phillpotts 1911