Limb
Origin 1
From Middle English lim, from Old English lim ("limb, branch"), from Proto-Germanic *limuz ("branch, limb"). Cognate with Old Norse limr ("limb"). The silent -b began to appear in the late 1500s.
Full definition of limb
Noun
limb
(plural limbs)- A major appendage of human or animal, used for locomotion (such as an arm, leg or wing).
- 1914, Louis Joseph Vance, Nobody Chapter 1, Three chairs of the steamer type, all maimed, comprised the furniture of this roof-garden, with...on one of the copings a row of four red clay flower-pots filled with sun-baked dust from which gnarled and rusty stalks thrust themselves up like withered elfin limbs.
- A branch of a tree.
- (archery) The part of the bow, from the handle to the tip.
- (botany) The border or upper spreading part of a monopetalous corolla, or of a petal or sepal; blade.
- (astronomy) The border or edge of the disk of a heavenly body, especially of the sun or moon.
- The graduated margin of an arc or circle in an instrument for measuring angles.
- An elementary piece of the mechanism of a lock.
- A thing or person regarded as a part or member of, or attachment to, something else.
- Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)That little limb of the devil has cheated the gallows.
Derived terms
Verb
- To remove the limbs from an animal or tree.They limbed the felled trees before cutting them into logs.
- To supply with limbs.
- Henry David Thoreau, Walden:Man was not made so large limbed and robust but that he must seek to narrow his world and wall in a space such as fitted him.
Synonyms
Origin 2
From Latin limbus, "border".