lame
/leɪm/
Word Rarity
Rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 3.95 in modern English
6
Scrabble Score
4
Letters
1
Syllables
4
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "With the years, this horse has little by little gone lame."
- "Alone, alone, to where he sits, The Shadow cloak’d from head to foot Who keeps the keys of all the creeds, I wander, often falling lame, And looking back to whence I came, Or on to where the pathway leads; […]"
- "a lame man"
- "a lame endeavour"
- "O, most lame and impotent conclusion![…]"
- "It is the remark of an ingenious writer, should a barbarous Indian, who had never seen a palace or a ship, view their separate and disjointed parts, and observe the pillars, doors, windows, cornices and turrets of the one, or the prow and stern, the ribs and masts, the ropes and shrouds, the sails and tackle of the other, he would be able to form but a very lame and dark idea of either of those excellent and useful inventions."
Etymology
From Middle English lame, from Old English lama (“lame”), from Proto-West Germanic *lam, from Proto-Germanic *lamaz (“lame”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃lemH- (“to tire; to break”).
Origin
Word Breakdown
Regional Pronunciation
- American English: /leɪm/
- British English: /leɪm/