limp
/lɪmp/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.43 in modern English
8
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
adj
Example Sentences
- "Dirk Kuyt sandwiched a goal in between Carroll's double as City endured a night of total misery, with captain Carlos Tevez limping off early on with a hamstring strain that puts a serious question mark over his participation in Saturday's FA Cup semi-final against Manchester United at Wembley."
- "The bomber limped home on one engine."
- "limping verses"
- "The business limped through the recession"
- "I think, too, of other organizations that are doing much good work for us, and maybe with words are cheered on, but when it comes to the dollars and cents, few are willing to make any sort of sacrifice to put their money where their mouth is. The National Gay Task Force is an excellent example... drawing on the support of gay people in fifty states, yet having to limp along on $65,000 a year budgets. Organizations like Christian Cause, that would wipe us out if they could, draw ten times that amount with little effort."
- "And so we limped along for another month or two, pretending we still had a reason to be together."
Etymology
From Middle English limpen (“to fall short”), from Old English limpan, from Proto-West Germanic *limpan, from Proto-Germanic *limpaną (“to hang down”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)lemb-, *(s)lembʰ- (“to hang loosely, hang limply”). Cognate with Low German lumpen (“to limp”), Middle High German limpfen (“to hobble, limp”), dialectal German lampen (“to hang down loosely”), Icelandic limpa (“limpness, weakness”).