Spindly describes something long and thin in a way that looks too weak to hold itself up. The key is that second half: it is not a compliment about being slim, it is a small worry that the thing might snap or give way. A newborn goat on spindly legs, a spindly little tree that will not survive the wind, a table with spindly legs you would not put a television on, a seedling gone spindly and pale because it was kept away from the light.

It is an adjective, most often used before a noun, and it goes especially with legs, arms, fingers, branches, stems and the legs of furniture. Applied to a person it is gently unkind — 'his spindly arms' says weak, not elegant. For a person you admire you would say slender or slim.

The feeling of the word is affectionate more often than cruel. There is something a bit comic and a bit tender in it; people use it about baby animals and about old wooden chairs. Compare its neighbours: skinny is blunt and about people, scrawny is harsher and suggests poor feeding, gangly means tall and awkward but strong enough, and spindly is the one that says 'that could break'.

The picture inside the word is a spindle — the thin rod used for spinning thread by hand, and later the thin turned rods you see in the back of a wooden chair. Once you see the chair, you have the word.