Cripple
/ˈkɹɪp(ə)l/Definition, CEFR level B2, pronunciation, examples, and quiz.
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Definition
adjCrippled.
nounA person who has severely impaired physical abilities because of deformation, injury, or amputation of parts of the body.
Sentence Examples
It's because of you that I'm a cripple!
Tom is a cripple.
Synonyms & Antonyms
Synonyms:
Antonyms:
None
CEFR Practice Quiz
The massive snowstorm could ____ the city's entire transportation network for days.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
It's because of you that I'm a ____!
Word Origin & History
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.
Literary Quotations & Historical Citations
"And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night, who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away."
— 1599 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]:
"Early treatment, and treatment spread over a long period, was the on means of rendering a cripple child fit to mix with its fellows on anything like equal terms, […]"
— 1922, Maternity and Child Welfare - Volume 6:
"You let sin in a church and it will cripple that church's ministry. Let sin get its ugly hands on the life of an individual and it will wreck and ruin and twist any life that it gets a hold on. Here was a cripple man who was excluded from the temple."
— 2006, Glenn Earle Cummings, The Touch of His Hand:
"Other[s] think that, certain challenges are for certain people and not for them, that the reason when some women give birth to a cripple child, or male child instead to a female child, they think God did not answer their wishes, forgetting that every child is a gift from God […]"
— 2014, Paul M Mahlobogwane, Transcend like a Butterfly:
"He held the cripple boy like a towel. The cripple boy's arms and legs dangled uselessly over his father's arm, one of each on either side, while his father balanced the diaper-clad boy on his forearm."
— 2015, Brennan Morton, Dying For Strangers: Memoirs of a Special Ops Operator in Iraq:
Explore More B2 Vocabulary Words
CEFR Practice Quiz
The massive snowstorm could ____ the city's entire transportation network for days.
CEFR Practice Quiz (Alternate)
It's because of you that I'm a ____!