Library / English Dictionary

CRIPPLE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Someone who is unable to walk normally because of an injury or disability to the legs or back

Classified under:

Nouns denoting people

Hypernyms ("cripple" is a kind of...):

individual; mortal; person; somebody; someone; soul (a human being)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "cripple"):

crookback; humpback; hunchback (a person whose back is hunched because of abnormal curvature of the upper spine)

Derivation:

cripple (deprive of the use of a limb, especially a leg)

 II. (verb) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Deprive of the use of a limb, especially a leg

Example:

The accident has crippled her for life

Synonyms:

cripple; lame

Classified under:

Verbs of grooming, dressing and bodily care

Hypernyms (to "cripple" is one way to...):

maim (injure or wound seriously and leave permanent disfiguration or mutilation)

Troponyms (each of the following is one way to "cripple"):

hamstring (cripple by cutting the hamstring)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s somebody
Something ----s somebody

Derivation:

cripple (someone who is unable to walk normally because of an injury or disability to the legs or back)

Sense 2

Meaning:

Deprive of strength or efficiency; make useless or worthless

Example:

Their behavior stultified the boss's hard work

Synonyms:

cripple; stultify

Classified under:

Verbs of size, temperature change, intensifying, etc.

Hypernyms (to "cripple" is one way to...):

weaken (lessen the strength of)

Sentence frames:

Somebody ----s something
Something ----s somebody
Something ----s something

Credits

 Context examples: 

Mates, says he, there's two of them alone there; one's the old cripple that brought us all here and blundered us down to this; the other's that cub that I mean to have the heart of.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

On the next day Koona went, and but five of them remained: Joe, too far gone to be malignant; Pike, crippled and limping, only half conscious and not conscious enough longer to malinger; Sol-leks, the one-eyed, still faithful to the toil of trace and trail, and mournful in that he had so little strength with which to pull; Teek, who had not travelled so far that winter and who was now beaten more than the others because he was fresher; and Buck, still at the head of the team, but no longer enforcing discipline or striving to enforce it, blind with weakness half the time and keeping the trail by the loom of it and by the dim feel of his feet.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)

The comic verse-writers and the cartoonists took hold of it with screaming laughter, and in the personal columns of society weeklies jokes were perpetrated on it to the effect that Charley Frensham told Archie Jennings, in confidence, that five lines of Ephemera would drive a man to beat a cripple, and that ten lines would send him to the bottom of the river.

(Martin Eden, by Jack London)

He is a cripple in the sense that he walks with a limp; but in other respects he appears to be a powerful and well-nurtured man.

(The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

If we complain that Jim Harrison has been crippled, they would answer that they have no official knowledge that Jim Harrison was our nominee.

(Rodney Stone, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

"My seared vision! My crippled strength!" he murmured regretfully.

(Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Brontë)

Both men were wounded, and he was thrashing them both for having disobeyed his orders and crippled themselves in advance of the hunting season.

(The Sea-Wolf, by Jack London)

To add to our concern, we heard voices already drawing near us in the woods along shore, and we had not only the danger of being cut off from the stockade in our half-crippled state but the fear before us whether, if Hunter and Joyce were attacked by half a dozen, they would have the sense and conduct to stand firm.

(Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson)

I have the clearest claim upon half of their present estate, and if they could have found a single paper—which, fortunately, was in the strong-box of my solicitors—they would undoubtedly have crippled our case.

(The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle)

Pike, the malingerer, leaped upon the crippled animal, breaking its neck with a quick flash of teeth and a jerk, Buck got a frothing adversary by the throat, and was sprayed with blood when his teeth sank through the jugular.

(The Call of the Wild, by Jack London)