crow's foot

See also: crowsfoot and crow's-foot

English

The crow's-foot notation indicates that an author can write several books, and a book can be written by several authors.

Alternative forms

• crow's-foot, crowsfoot

Etymology

From Middle English crowes feet pl.

Noun

crow's foot (plural crow's feet or crows' feet)

1. (usually in the plural) A small wrinkle in the corner of an eye, emblematic of aging.
   • 1814 May 9, [Jane Austen], chapter XV, in Mansfield Park: […], volume I, London: […] [George Sidney] for T[homas] Egerton, […], →OCLC, pages 305–306:

     You must get a brown gown, and a white apron, and a mob cap, and we must make you a few wrinkles, and a little of the crowsfoot at the corner of your eyes, and you will be a very proper, little old woman.

   • 2013 September 11, Kim Painter, “New wrinkle: Botox approved to treat crow's feet”, in USA Today‎^[1]:

     The Food and Drug Administration says it's an effective temporary treatment for crow's feet, the wrinkles that form next to aging eyes.

2. (sewing) A triangular embroidery stitch.
3. (databases) A symbol, resembling a bisected equilateral triangle, used in database diagrams to indicate plurality.
   • 1999, Robert J Muller, Database Design for Smarties:

     The crow's-foot notation similarly represents relationships.

   • 2007, Geoff Coffey, Susan Prosser, Filemaker Pro 9: The Missing Manual:

     Each crow's foot in your ER diagram indicates the need for a foreign key.

4. A number of lines rove through a long wooden block, supporting the backbone of an awning horizontally.
5. A caltrop.
6. A device for supporting a tripod to prevent the legs from slipping.
   • 1929, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, When the World Screamed‎^[2]:

     My foreman with his faked assistant had littered the place with all my apparatus, my bellbox, my crowsfoot, the V-drills, the rods, and the weight, but Malone insisted that we disregard all that and descend ourselves to the lowest level.

7. Certain flowering plants
   1. especially, in genus Ranunculus

Translations

wrinkle in the corner of an eye

• Portuguese: pé-de-galinha (pt)

Anagrams

• crowfoots