knock-knee

Condition in which the knees are close together and the feet widely separated. Infants are usually knock-kneed during their first few years of walking, but newborn babies are usually bow-legged.

Knock-knees (Latin genu valgum) and bow-legs (genu varum) can result from nutritional deficiency diseases, such as rickets, now rare in Western countries, and in adults from rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis in the knee, or from fractures of the bones about the knee.