cripple
Syllables: crip·ple/ˈkɹɪp(ə)l/
cripple adjective: crippled.
Adjective
cripple (not comparable)
- Crippled.
- And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night, who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away.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...
- 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, […]1922, Maternity and Child Welfare - Volume 6
Noun
cripple (countable and uncountable, plural cripples)
- 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.
- I am […]a cripple in my limbs; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine.1700, [John] Dryden, “Preface”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […], →OCLC
- Synonyms:
- disabled
- A person who is severely impaired or deficient in some non-physical way.
- Many a one, who perhaps doesn't suspect it, is a moral cripple, or maybe a mental cripple.1906, Religious Telescope, volume 72, page 8
- A shortened wooden stud or brace used to construct the portion of a wall above a door or above and below a window.
- Scrapple.
- A rocky shallow in a stream.
Verb
cripple (third-person singular simple present cripples, present participle crippling, simple past and past participle crippled)
- To make someone a cripple; to cause someone to become physically impaired.
- The car bomb crippled five passers-by.
- A rackingly painful disease that affects the joints and finally cripples, it is caused by an imbalance of uric acid in the system.2014, Charles L. Mee, Jr, Lorenzo de Medici
- Synonyms:
- disable, disenable, invalid, incapacitate, unable
- To damage seriously; to destroy.
- My ambitions were crippled by a lack of money.
- 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.1968, Cynthia Propper Seton, A Special and Curious Blessing, New York, N.Y.: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., page 22
- Synonyms:
- destroy, annihilate, aerosolize, atomize, benothing, bewreck, blot out, blotto, dash, decompose
- To cause severe and disabling damage; to make unable to function normally.
- With all these people all around / I'm crippled with anxiety / But I'm told it's where I'm s'posed to be.2019, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, I Don't Care
- But the penny was beginning to drop: even a successful railway could be crippled by its capital costs.2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 64
- To release a product (especially a computer program) with reduced functionality, in some cases, making the item essentially worthless.
- The word processor was released in a crippled demonstration version that did not allow you to save.
- To nerf something to the point of being underpowered.
cripple meaning in Hindi, Tamil, Urdu and Bengali
cripple in Hindi
- a cripple, disabled person
- अपाहिज apāhij, विकलांग viklāṅg
cripple in Tamil
- தடைப்படுதல், முடங்கிப்போதல், ஊனமுற்றவர்
cripple in Urdu
- لنگڑا, محتاج
cripple in Bengali
- পঙ্গু, অক্ষম ব্যক্তি
More languagesFewer languages
- cripple in Telugu
- కుబ్జుడు kubjuḍu
- cripple in Malayalam
- കുണ്ടൻ kuṇṭaṉ
- cripple in Kannada
- ಹೆಳವ, ಕುಂಟ, ಅಂಗವಿಕಲ, ಮುರುಕ
- cripple in Arabic
- مُقْعَد muqʕad
Examples of cripple in a sentence
- You let sin in a church and it will cripple that church's ministry.2006, Glenn Earle Cummings, The Touch of His Hand:
- 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.2015, Brennan Morton, Dying For Strangers: Memoirs of a Special Ops Operator in Iraq:
- 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.1988 December, Joseph Frederick Bouchard, “Naval Operations in Crises”, in Use of naval force in crises: A theory of stratified crisis...
- 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.2009, Laura Anne Gilman, Flesh and Fire (The Vineart War; 1), New York, N.Y.: Pocket Books, published 2010, →ISBN, pages 392–393:
Synonyms of cripple
30 more synonymsFewer synonyms
Forms of cripple
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| alternative form (obsolete) | creeple |
| Noun | |
| plural | cripples |
| Verb | |
| third-person singular present | cripples |
| present participle | crippling |
| past participle | crippled |
| past | crippled |
Origin of cripple
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.
Words formed from cripple
Phrases with cripple
Words that rhyme with cripple
Questions about cripple
- What does cripple mean?
- Cripple means crippled.
- What is cripple in Hindi?
- Cripple in Hindi is अपाहिज (apāhij), विकलांग (viklāṅg). See Cripple meaning in Hindi.
- How do you use cripple in a sentence?
- You let sin in a church and it will cripple that church's ministry.
- What part of speech is cripple?
- Cripple can be an adjective, a noun or a verb.
- How do you pronounce cripple?
- Cripple is pronounced /ˈkɹɪp(ə)l/.
Words near cripple in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: cripple (page history and authors); अपाहिज (Hindi) (page history and authors); cripple (Tamil Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cripple (Urdu Wiktionary) (page history and authors); cripple (Bengali Wiktionary) (page history and authors); కుబ్జుడు (Telugu) (page history and authors); കുണ്ടൻ (Malayalam) (page history and authors); cripple (Kannada Wiktionary) (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-Vealhurl-cripple.wav, LL-Q1860 (eng)-Wodencafe-cripple.wav.
Cite this entry: “cripple.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/cripple. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.