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limp

UK/lɪmp/US/lɪmp/
verbB14 meaningsCommon in everyday speech and writing · #4,374 of 15,258leans spoken

Other forms: limps, limped, limping, limply

To limp is to walk with a hitch in it, putting as little weight as you can on one leg. You see it after a bad tackle: the player gets up, takes three steps, and limps to the side of the pitch with a hand on his knee.

It pairs with along, off, home and back, because limping is a way of getting somewhere rather than a way of standing still. Machines borrow it — a plane limps home on one engine, a small firm limps along from month to month. And limp is an adjective with nothing to do with walking: a limp handshake, limp lettuce, a limp flag on a windless day. Soft, drooping, no stiffness left in it.

Definitions of limp

  1. 1verblimpTo walk unevenly because one leg hurts.B1~15%

    “He limped off the field holding his knee.”

    synonyms: hobble

  2. 2adjectivefloppySoft and drooping, with no strength or stiffness left.B2~35%

    “The salad was limp by the time we sat down.”

    synonyms: floppy, soft

  3. 3nounitselfThe uneven walk itself.B1~31%

    “She has walked with a limp since the accident.”

  4. 4verbkeepTo keep going slowly and with difficulty after damage.B2~19%

    “The ship limped into port with a hole in her side.”

Shares are an estimate: a language model read 69 sentences found in the wild and placed 26 of them on a sense (43 were unclear) — a count of our sample, not a measurement of English.

limp is a way of walking.

Remember it

LIMP → a LAMP

Picture a tall lamp on three legs, one of them cut short. It steps off the floor and comes after you across the room — dip, up, dip, up — and the light swings low on every other step.

hooks ontolamp

Where it comes from

The root under it means hang loosely: Proto-Germanic *limpaną, to hang down. That is the adjective exactly — a flag with no wind in it, a handshake with nothing behind it. And it is the walk as well, a leg that will not take your weight and hangs instead. Middle English limpen meant to fall short.

  1. Proto-Indo-European

    *(s)lemb-

  2. Proto-Germanic

    *limpaną — to hang down

  3. Proto-West Germanic

    *limpan

  4. Old English

    limpan

  5. Middle English

    limpen — to fall short

  6. English, today

    limp

Built from

  • *(s)lembʰ- · Proto-Indo-European — to hang loosely, hang limply

From Middle English limpen (“to fall short”), from Old English limpan, from Proto-West Germanic limpan, from Proto-Germanic limpaną (“to hang down”), from Proto-Indo-European (s)lemb-, (s)lembʰ- (“to hang loosely, hang limply”). Cognate with Low German lumpen (“to limp”), Middle High German limpfen (“to hobble, limp”), dialectal German lampen (“to hang down loosely”), Icelandic limpa (“limpness, weakness”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA

Practised in Body & Health, Everyday Verbs, A Man Called Ove, Ways of Moving

First appears in chapter 38 of A Man Called Ove.

Practise this word

limp in the wild

  • A limp is the presenting problem in about 4% of children who visit hospital emergency departments.

    Limp

  • Three times he tried to get it started and eventually was able to limp back to the pits.

    1992 24 Hours of Le Mans

  • Runners in this class may appear to have a slight limp when they are running but otherwise have a stride similar to able-bodied runners.

    T38 (classification)

From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. These sentences were written by other people about their own subjects; they are here to show the word at work, not as anybody’s opinion.