Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use cripple in a sentence

40 example sentences · adjective, noun, verb

Cripple means crippled. Example: “The car bomb crippled five passers-by.”

Examples of cripple by meaning

adjectiveCrippled.

  • You let sin in a church and it will cripple that church's ministry.2006, Glenn Earle Cummings, The Touch of His Hand
  • He held the cripple boy like a towel.2015, Brennan Morton, Dying For Strangers: Memoirs of a Special Ops Operator in Iraq

nounA 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

verbTo 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

verbTo 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
  • 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...

verbTo cause severe and disabling damage; to make unable to function normally.

  • 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

verbTo release a product (especially a computer program) with reduced functionality, in some cases, making the item...

  • The word processor was released in a crippled demonstration version that did not allow you to save.

More sentences with cripple

  • The insurgents’ shadow government is being crippled by the federal military strikes.From the entry shadow
  • The high cost of capital has a crippling effect on many small firms.From the entry crippling
  • As the crippled jet spiralled down, the pilot pulled the escape handle, ejecting first his rear-seater, then himself.From the entry eject
  • She came abeam the crippled ship.From the entry abeam
  • A frustrated robbery may financially cripple the company or lead it to recover; a frustrated homicide or murder leaves the victim injured or wounded, not killed.From the entry frustrated
  • My sister really did have no weaknesses except a weird, crippling fear of bananas.2021, Beth Garrod, Sister Switch, Simon & Schuster, →ISBN. From the entry bananaphobia
  • They also both agree that Edna became crippled by a sudden onset of Omphalophobia.2011, Elura Nanos, Michele Sileo, Legalese to English: Civil Procedure. From the entry omphalophobia
  • But the last of its core vessels hangs before me now; crippled and defeated but still sensate.2007 September 25, Bungie, Halo 3, Microsoft Game Studios, Xbox 360, level/area: Terminal Six (Legendary). From the entry sensate
  • My old crippled grandmother can drive faster than you, and she only has one leg.2006, Joseph McLaughlin, Trail of Death, page 413. From the entry andele
  • These four problems, spaghettiing through our minds and bookshelves, make for crippling limitations of literary sensibility.2005, John Lennard, “Punctuation”, in The Poetry Handbook: A Guide to Reading Poetry for Pleasure and Practical Criticism, 2nd edition…. From the entry spaghetti
  • Political correctness cripples discourse, creates ugly language and is generally stupid.2004, George Carlin, When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?, New York: Hyperion Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, →OL, page 72. From the entry political correctness
  • Overdetachment is a serious character flaw that cripples any possibility for intimacy.2002, Paul J. Wadell, Becoming Friends, page 50. From the entry overdetachment
  • Also cannot wear platforms now as feet too crippled so will look short.2001 [1999], Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, New York: Penguin, →ISBN, page 167. From the entry platform
  • Complex viruses that cripple communication networks and wartime operations are another cyberweapon.2000, Kevin Bowyer, Ethics and computing: living responsibly in a computerized world. From the entry cyberweapon
  • How ken ye leave me so in my old age, weak an' crippled an' highlone?1971, Ioana Sturdza, Raymond Vianu, Fairy Tales and Legends from Romania (page 145). From the entry highlone
  • I recognize a frameful of typewriter parts put together to resemble a procession of cripples.1968, Madelaine Duke, The Lethal Innocents, page 13. From the entry frameful
  • Gimpy Bill" is a cripple who sold lead-pencils in Market Street.1906, “The Eathquake and After”, in Current Literature, LX:6, page 576. From the entry gimpy
  • Sanctions have crippled the Iranian economy, reducing a top oil exporter to a poor and struggling shadow of its former self.2025 June 26, Kasra Naji, “When Iran's supreme leader emerges from hiding he will find a very different nation”, in BBC. From the entry shadow of one's former self
  • Germany was not crippled as an economic power.2015, Stephen Gross, Export Empire, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, →ISBN, pages 50–51. From the entry Carthaginian peace
  • Fearful that the publicity would cripple his presidential buildup, Kennedy paid an emergency call on Washington superlawyer Clark Clifford.2011, Christopher J. Matthews, Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America, page 115. From the entry superlawyer
  • To cripple another person intentionally is to violate the same kind of code as the legendary honor among thieves.2011, Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time, →ISBN, page 281. From the entry honor among thieves
  • Nine out of 10 women suffer from period pain – sometimes crippling – but many say their problem is dismissed.2011 August 8, Bim Adewunmi, “The truth about period pain”, in The Guardian. From the entry period pain
  • The density of this city guaranteed a less dramatic impact than the shell shocks that crippled so many other cities.2010, Roberta Brandes Gratz, The Battle for Gotham, page 21. From the entry shell shock
  • A cripple, a woman, and a coward.2010, Mary Connealy, The Wildflower Bride, Barbour Publishing, →ISBN, page 291. From the entry thin the herd
  • When coffee and cocoa prices unexpectedly dove, Côte d’Ivoire quickly went from Africa’s rich kid to crippling debtitude.2007: Bob Harris, Who Hates Whom: Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts, and Various Things Blowing up: A Woefully Incomplete Guide…. From the entry dove
  • A mismount at twenty-five yards often leads to a crippled bird, and the dog often has a hard time finding it.2006, Tom Deck, Orvis Guide to Gunfitting, page 42. From the entry mismount
  • Both were observable figures; one a personable individual of foreign cut, the other—obviously in spite of his well-wrapped-up form—a pronounced cripple.1934, Ernest Bramah, The Bravo of London. From the entry observable
  • The cripple returned the smile and stuck out his hand.1933, Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts, London: Picador Classics. From the entry reënter
  • He sat there, crippled, in a tub, with the under-ground manager showing him the seam with a powerful torch.1928, D[avid] H[erbert] Lawrence, chapter IX, in Lady Chatterley’s Lover, [Germany?]: Privately printed, →OCLC, page 126. From the entry seam
  • The digital contact tracing service, which crippled businesses and forced millions of workers into quarantine, will stop working on April 27 for lack of use.2023 March 29, “‘Pingdemic’ Covid app to be locked down forever”, in The Daily Telegraph, page 2. From the entry pingdemic

Meaning of cripple

  1. adjective Crippled.
  2. noun A person who has severely impaired physical abilities because of deformation, injury, or amputation of parts of the body.
  3. noun A person who is severely impaired or deficient in some non-physical way.

Full definition of cripple

Questions about cripple in a sentence

How do you use cripple in a sentence?
Cripple is used as an adjective, noun and verb. For example: “The car bomb crippled five passers-by.”
What is a short sentence with cripple?
“She came abeam the crippled ship.”
What does cripple mean?
Cripple means crippled.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: cripple (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this page: “How to use cripple in a sentence.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sentences/cripple. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.