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Of American-English origin, the colloquial and humorous phrase hollow legs, also hollow leg, designates the capacity to eat or drink a lot without ill effects.
This phrase occurs, for example, in the following from the Evening Standard (London, England) of Thursday 5th July 2018 [page 21, column 1]:
In the Brexit spirit
News of a love-in between Dominic Cummings, the Vote Leave campaign director, and Benedict Cumberbatch, due to play him in a forthcoming Channel 4 drama with the working title Brexit. They met for a drink last week, according to a source. Cummings had previously said of the production, “What’s the betting this will be a Remain love-in and dire?” But seemingly the Sherlock actor won him over: the pair stayed up “very late” drinking whisky. “Dominic has hollow legs,” a friend says. Will it be a regular thing? The drinking buddies are remaining schtum.
These are, in chronological order, the earliest occurrences of the phrase hollow legs, also hollow leg, that I have found:
1-: From the Republican Banner (Nashville, Tennessee, USA) of Saturday 9th June 1866 [page 3, column 1]:
CITY POLICE COURT.
Perhaps you’ll think, as you take a drink,
Of fiery aqua ardiente—
And look around on the hot parched ground
And the jades and rogues so plenty;
You wouldn’t go to Mexico
Any way your friends could fix ye,
There to remain, with a great domain,
With its silver and gold, twice overtold.
While there’s bread and meat in Dixie.So thought, no doubt, Mr. Porter Gates, who opened the gates of his internal economy to a couple of pints of the “fiery aqua ardiente,” and gave a tableau of himself in a muddy gutter, for the benefit of his creditors. When in convivial mood Mr. Gates is one of the floodgates of generosity who swings complacent to the stream of popular prejudices. He is a Fenian or an anti-Fenian, as the “treat” may be, and will drink confusion to the enemies of anybody who will pay for it, as long as his hollow legs will hold water, after which those classic pedestals will give way and he sinks into his shoes and coils up into a loose knot upon the side-walk. In this condition the guard found him, and gave him transportation on the wheelbarrow street railroad to the Work House.
2-: From the Republican Banner (Nashville, Tennessee, USA) of Tuesday 25th September 1866 [page 3, column 2]:
CITY POLICE COURT.
[…]
James Walker, under ordinary circumstances, is an accomplished pedestrian and does not belie his patronymic. But unfortunately, the liquor he drank run [sic] into his hollow legs and they refused their office. He had to be hauled to the Work House.
3-: From Fechter’s Inebriety, published in The Cleveland Leader (Cleveland, Ohio, USA) of Wednesday 6th January 1875 [page 8, column 4]:
Old topers have a phrase, which is more expressive than elegant, by which they explain their capacity for rum, saying, “I have a hollow leg.”
4-: From one of the unconnected paragraphs making up the column Council Jottings, published in The Cleveland Leader (Cleveland, Ohio, USA) of Tuesday 12th January 1875 [page 8, column 4]—however, in this paragraph, the meaning of hollow leg is obscure:
Some high-moral entertainment must have been going on over at the West Side last night, as Mr. Russell was not present. A “hollow leg” may have prevented.
5-: From The Excursion to Hendersonville, and Incidents Along the Way, published in the Daily Charlotte Observer (Charlotte, North Carolina, USA) of Tuesday 8th July 1879 [page 2, column 1]:
The party who left Charlotte on Friday morning last to attend the celebration of the completion of the Spartanburg and Asheville Railroad to Hendersonville, were mainly selected by, and were members of the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce. […] Not a single incident transpired to mar the pleasure of the party during the entire time, if we may except the fact that one of the gentlemen had hollow legs, and the effort to fill them up with rations nearly created a famine.
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