Cripple
adj, noun, verb, slang ·Common ·Middle school level
Definitions
- 1 A person who has severely impaired physical abilities because of deformation, injury, or amputation of parts of the body. countable, offensive, uncountable
"He returned from war a cripple."
- 2 someone who is unable to walk normally because of an injury or disability to the legs or back wordnet
- 3 A person who is severely impaired or deficient in some non-physical way. broadly, countable, figuratively, uncountable
"Many a one, who perhaps doesn't suspect it, is a moral cripple, or maybe a mental cripple."
- 4 A shortened wooden stud or brace used to construct the portion of a wall above a door or above and below a window. countable, uncountable
- 5 Scrapple. dialectal, uncountable
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- 6 A rocky shallow in a stream. countable, uncountable
- 1 To make someone a cripple; to cause someone to become physically impaired.
"The car bomb crippled five passers-by."
- 2 deprive of the use of a limb, especially a leg wordnet
- 3 To damage seriously; to destroy. figuratively
"My ambitions were crippled by a lack of money."
- 4 deprive of strength or efficiency; make useless or worthless wordnet
- 5 To cause severe and disabling damage; to make unable to function normally. figuratively
"With all these people all around / I'm crippled with anxiety / But I'm told it's where I'm s'posed to be."
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- 6 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."
- 7 To nerf something to the point of being underpowered. slang
- 1 Crippled. archaic, dated, not-comparable
"And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night, who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away."
Example
More examples"It's because of you that I'm a cripple!"
Etymology
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.
Related phrases
More for "cripple"
Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.