Limber means supple and easily bent. Stay limber, limber limbs, limber up.
It describes a body that moves freely, and limber up is what athletes do before exercise — the standard word for loosening the muscles. Applied to a mind it means flexible and quick. As a noun, a limber is the detachable front part of a gun carriage, which is a separate and purely military word. Note that limber's origin is genuinely unknown.
1adjectivelimberSupple and easily bent.
“Dancers stretch every morning to keep their bodies limber.”
limber is a quality of suppleness.
The origin is unknown, possibly related to limb or limp with an -er ending, as in slipper meaning slippery. The gun-carriage limber is a different word.
Built from
unknown; possibly related to limb or limp -er, as seen in clever, slipper (“slippery”), waker (“alert”), etc.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA