A positional abnormality marked by outward bowing of the legs in which the knees stay wide apart when a person stands with the feet and ankles together.

Coxa vara includes all forms of decrease of the femoral neck shaft angle (the angle between the neck and the shaft of the femur) to less than 120 degrees.

A height below that which is expected according to age and gender norms. Although there is no universally accepted definition of short stature, many refer to "short stature" as height more than 2 standard deviations below the mean for age and gender (or below the 3rd percentile for age and gender dependent norms).

Weakness of the hip girdle and upper thigh muscles, for instance in myopathies, leads to an instability of the pelvis on standing and walking. If the muscles extending the hip joint are affected, the posture in that joint becomes flexed and lumbar lordosis increases. The patients usually have difficulties standing up from a sitting position. Due to weakness in the gluteus medius muscle, the hip on the side of the swinging leg drops with each step (referred to as Trendelenburg sign). The gait appears waddling. The patients frequently attempt to counteract the dropping of the hip on the swinging side by bending the trunk towards the side which is in the stance phase (in the German language literature this is referred to as Duchenne sign). Similar gait patterns can be caused by orthopedic conditions when the origin and the insertion site of the gluteus medius muscle are closer to each other than normal, for instance due to a posttraumatic elevation of the trochanter or pseudarthrosis of the femoral neck.

The presence of an abnormal lateral curvature of the spine.

A deformity of the chest caused by overgrowth of the ribs and characterized by protrusion of the sternum.

An abnormally short femoral neck (which is the process of bone, connecting the femoral head with the femoral shaft).

Irregularity of the normally smooth surface of the metaphyses.

The odontoid process, or dens, is a bony projection from the axis (C2) upward into the ring of the atlas (C1) at the top of the spine. During embryogenesis, the body of the odontoid derives from the centrum of the atlas and separates from the atlas, fusing with the superior portion of the axis. If the odontoid is hypoplastic or absent, the attachments for the apical and alar ligaments are missing, allowing for excessive rotation of the atlas, craniocervical instability, and possibly cord compression (summary by Stevens et al., 2009).

When viewed in lateral radiographs, vertebral bodies have a roughly rectangular configuration. This term applies if the vertebral body appears rounded or oval.

Fracture or fragmentation at the lateral portion of the metaphysis of a long bone. The radiographic appearance is that of a small corner of metaphysis separated from the metaphyseal edge by thin linear radiolucency. This feature can be observed in child abuse but fragmented appearance of the metaphysis or facture-like lesions can also be detected in the setting of certain skeletal dysplasias.

A heterogeneous group of disorders associated with walking and growth disturbances that become evident during the second year of life. Characteristics are platyspondyly (flattened vertebrae) and marked hip and knee metaphyseal lesions. The different forms of spondylometaphyseal dysplasia are distinguished by the localisation and severity of involvement of the affected metaphyses.