cripple

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English

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Alternative forms

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Etymology

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From Middle English cripel, crepel, crüpel, from Old English crypel (“crippled; a cripple”), from Proto-Germanic *krupilaz (“tending to crawl; a cripple”), from Proto-Indo-European *grewb- (“to bend, crouch, crawl”), from Proto-Indo-European *ger- (“to bend, twist”), equivalent to creep +‎ -le. Cognate with Dutch kreupel, Low German Kröpel, German Krüppel, Old Norse kryppill.

Pronunciation

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Adjective

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cripple (not comparable)

  1. (now rare, dated) crippled
    • 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
      And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night, who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away.
    • 1922, Maternity and Child Welfare - Volume 6:
      Early treatment, and treatment spread over a long period, was the on means of rendering a cripple child fit to mix with its fellows on anything like equal terms, […]
    • 2006, Glenn Earle Cummings, The Touch of His Hand:
      You let sin in a church and it will cripple that church's ministry. Let sin get its ugly hands on the life of an individual and it will wreck and ruin and twist any life that it gets a hold on. Here was a cripple man who was excluded from the temple.
    • 2014, Paul M Mahlobogwane, Transcend like a Butterfly:
      Other[s] think that, certain challenges are for certain people and not for them, that the reason when some women give birth to a cripple child, or male child instead to a female child, they think God did not answer their wishes, forgetting that every child is a gift from God […]
    • 2015, Brennan Morton, Dying For Strangers: Memoirs of a Special Ops Operator in Iraq:
      He held the cripple boy like a towel. The cripple boy's arms and legs dangled uselessly over his father's arm, one of each on either side, while his father balanced the diaper-clad boy on his forearm.

Translations

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Noun

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cripple (countable and uncountable, plural cripples)

  1. (sometimes offensive) A person who has severely impaired physical abilities because of deformation, injury, or amputation of parts of the body.
    He returned from war a cripple.
  2. A shortened wooden stud or brace used to construct the portion of a wall above a door or above and below a window.
  3. (uncountable, dialect, Southern US except Louisiana) Scrapple.
  4. (among lumbermen) A rocky shallow in a stream.

Synonyms

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Translations

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Verb

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cripple (third-person singular simple present cripples, present participle crippling, simple past and past participle crippled)

  1. To make someone a cripple; to cause someone to become physically impaired.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:disable
    The car bomb crippled five passers-by.
    • 2014, Charles L. Mee, Jr, Lorenzo de Medici:
      A rackingly painful disease that affects the joints and finally cripples, it is caused by an imbalance of uric acid in the system.
  2. (figuratively) To damage seriously; to destroy.
    Synonyms: see Thesaurus:destroy, Thesaurus:harm
    My ambitions were crippled by a lack of money.
    • 1968, Cynthia Propper Seton, A Special and Curious Blessing, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., page 22:
      But in respect to the emotional crippling of children it seems to me that women have been overblamed for the kinds of mothers they make, and underblamed for the failure of their marriages.
    • 1988 December, Joseph Frederick Bouchard, “Naval Operations in Crises”, in Use of naval force in crises: A theory of stratified crisis interaction.‎[1], volume II, Stanford University, published 1989, →OCLC, page 453:
      The rules of engagement issued by Commander in Chief Pacific and U.S. Taiwan Defense Command for the air defense of Taiwan were highly restrictive prior to the 1958 crisis. American fighters on Taiwan were only permitted to fire on hostile aircraft entering Taiwan's airspace and were not permitted hot pursuit in international airspace. U.S. combat air patrols were required to remain east of the "Davis Line," which ran approximately down the center of the Taiwan Strait. After the crisis erupted, the U.S. Air Force commander on Taiwan convinced CINCPAC and the JCS that these rules would cripple air defense efforts in the event of concerted Communist air strikes against Taiwan. In September the JCS approved three relaxations to the rules of engagement: first, U.S. fighters were authorized to engage Communist aircraft crossing the Davis Line on an apparent course toward Taiwan or allied forces; […]
    • 2009, Laura Anne Gilman, Flesh and Fire (The Vineart War; 1), New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, published 2010, →ISBN, pages 392–393:
      “I was to see him the halfweek before, to plead for a reduction in the taxes he has placed on us. Impossible, to pay such a fee, and no reason for imposing it. The metalwrights are always willing to do our share, but there need must be a reason for it! He cripples us to build his treasury, and forces honest men to find work elsewhere.” / “The day I meet an honest metalwright, I’ll eat your hat,” a third voice said.
  3. (figuratively) To cause severe and disabling damage; to make unable to function normally.
    • 2019, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, I Don't Care:
      With all these people all around / I'm crippled with anxiety / But I'm told it's where I'm s'posed to be.
    • 2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 64:
      But the penny was beginning to drop: even a successful railway could be crippled by its capital costs.
  4. To release a product (especially a computer program) with reduced functionality, in some cases, making the item essentially worthless.
    Synonyms: limit, restrict
    The word processor was released in a crippled demonstration version that did not allow you to save.
  5. (slang, video games) To nerf something which is overpowered.

Translations

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Derived terms

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See also

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Anagrams

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