limb
/lɪm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.70 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
noun
An elementary piece of the mechanism of a lock.
noun
A thing or person regarded as a part or member of, or attachment to, something else.
noun
Ellipsis of limb of Satan (“a wicked or mischievous child”).
Example Sentences
- "UUhoſe hands are made to gripe a warlike Lance— Their ſhoulders broad, for complet armour fit, Their lims more large and of a bigger ſize Than all the brats yſprong from Typhons loins:"
- "Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with […] on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs."
- "That little limb of the devil has cheated the gallows."
- "They limbed the felled trees before cutting them into logs."
- "Innumerous living creatures , perfect forms , Limb'd and full grown: out of the ground uprose"
- "Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him."
Etymology
From Middle English lyme, lim, from Old English lim (“limb, branch”), from Proto-West Germanic *limu, from Proto-Germanic *limuz (“branch, limb”). Cognate with Old Norse limr (“limb”). The spelling with the silent unetymological -b first arose in the late 1500s. Compare crumb.
Origin
Word Breakdown
Usage
Subject
Wiktionary places this term in Medicine.