Quadriplegia

//ˌkwɑdɹɪˈplid͡ʒə// noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Paralysis from the neck down. countable, uncountable
  2. 2
    paralysis of both arms and both legs wordnet
  3. 3
    Paralysis of all four limbs. countable, uncountable

Synonyms

All synonyms
tetraplegiatetraplegia

Example

More examples

"You've got a million dollars in front of you. You can either spend it for yourself or spend it on a surgery for someone you don't know who is in danger of quadriplegia. You don't know each other. And no one will ever know what a noble deed you've done sacrificing all the money for the surgery for a person you don't know, or how mean you were to take the money confining that person to a wheelchair for the rest of their life. So what would you do? You can't share the money."

Etymology

From quadri- (“four”) + -plegia, from Ancient Greek πλήσσειν (plḗssein, “to strike”); probably patterned after paraplegia.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.