crippling

crippling is the present participle and gerund of cripple.

Adjective

crippling (comparative more crippling, superlative most crippling)

That cripples or incapacitates
- crippling depression
Causing a severe and insurmountable problem; detrimental.
- The high cost of capital has a crippling effect on many small firms.
- The company, appreciating the crippling affect ^([sic]) that this scheme will have on its activities unless the railway is diverted, has petitioned against the North Wales Hydro-Electric Power Bill at present before the House of Lords.1955 April, “Notes and News: Restoring the Festiniog Railway”, in Railway Magazine, page 288
Causing serious injuries, damage, or harm; damaging.
- crippling debt
- Today, the world is seeing record-shattering storms in California and catastrophic drought in places like East Africa. But by the 2030s, as temperatures rise, climate hazards are expected to increase all over the globe as different countries face more crippling heat waves, worsening coastal...2023 March 20, Brad Plumer, “Climate Change Is Speeding Toward Catastrophe. The Next Decade Is Crucial, U.N. Panel Says.”, in The New York Times, archived from the original on 30 Mar 2023

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.
Synonyms:

disable, disenable, invalid, incapacitate, unable
(figuratively) To damage seriously; to destroy.
- My ambitions were crippled by a lack of money.
Synonyms:

destroy, annihilate, aerosolize, atomize, benothing, bewreck, blot out, blotto, dash, decompose
(figuratively) 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
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.
Synonyms:

limit, restrict
(slang) To nerf something to the point of being underpowered.

crippling (countable and uncountable, plural cripplings)

What does crippling mean?: Crippling means that cripples or incapacitates.
What is crippling the present participle and gerund of?: Crippling is the present participle and gerund of cripple.
What part of speech is crippling?: Crippling can be an adjective or a noun.

Adapted from Wiktionary: crippling (page history and authors); cripple (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.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Cite this entry: “crippling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/crippling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.