KNEE-DEEP

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

IPA (US):

 Dictionary entry overview: What does knee-deep mean? 

• KNEE-DEEP (adjective)
  The adjective KNEE-DEEP has 1 sense:

1. coming only to the ankle or knee

  Familiarity information: KNEE-DEEP used as an adjective is very rare.

• KNEE-DEEP (adverb)
  The adverb KNEE-DEEP has 1 sense:

1. up to the knees

  Familiarity information: KNEE-DEEP used as an adverb is very rare.

 Dictionary entry details 

• KNEE-DEEP (adjective)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Coming only to the ankle or knee

Synonyms:

ankle-deep; knee-deep

Similar:

shallow (lacking physical depth; having little spatial extension downward or inward from an outer surface or backward or outward from a center)

• KNEE-DEEP (adverb)

Sense 1

Meaning:

Up to the knees

Synonyms:

knee-deep; knee-high

Context example:

we were standing knee-deep in the water

 Context examples 

But where Silver stood with his lieutenant, all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low white vapour that had crawled during the night out of the morass.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

The very cattle looked more tranquil than ours, as they stood knee-deep in clover, and the hens had a contented cluck, as if they never got nervous like Yankee biddies.

(Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott)

I struck straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

The sun was lying low in the west and shooting its level rays across the long sweep of rich green country, glinting on the white-fleeced sheep and throwing long shadows from the red kine who waded knee-deep in the juicy clover.

(The White Company, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Right below it there was an exceedingly small hollow of green turf, hidden by banks and a thick underwood about knee-deep, that grew there very plentifully; and in the centre of the dell, sure enough, a little tent of goat-skins, like what the gipsies carry about with them in England.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)