pigeon toes

8.2

Toes that point inward so the feet turn toward each other when walking

noun
/ˈpɪdʒən toʊz/

: dedos en paloma

Many children naturally grow out of pigeon toes as their muscles and bones develop.

Examples

The child was diagnosed with pigeon toes, which caused her feet to point inward when she walked.
She's got her mother's pigeon toes and squared shoulders.

Fiction book (1996)
Looking down at our feet, I could see no hint of our pigeon toes, nothing sad.

Fiction book (2000)
After her appointment, the doctor explained that pigeon toes can sometimes affect a person's balance.

Surface Forms

pigeon toes singular

pigeon toes plural

Morphology

pigeon + toe

The meaning is directly built from the image of toes resembling those of a pigeon: a learner who knows 'pigeon' (a bird) and 'toes' (digits on the foot) can infer toes that point or turn in like a pigeon’s. This animal-based descriptive comparison is a straightforward, cross-linguistically common compositional pattern, so the MWE is immediately comprehensible to a B1 learner.

Etymology

Pigeon toes comes from the way pigeons stand with their feet turned in. People thought the bird's toes pointed toward each other, so the name came to mean 'toes point inward' or to 'walk with feet turned toward each other'.