* IPA(key): /lɪm/ * Rhymes: -ɪm * Homophones: limn, Lymm

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. 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 I: 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 * go out on a limb TRANSLATIONS VERB LIMB (_third-person singular simple present_ LIMBS, _present participle_ LIMBING, _simple past and past participle_ LIMBED) * To remove the limbs from an animal or tree. _They LIMBED the felled trees before cutting them into logs._ * To supply with limbs. * Henry D. 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._ (Can we find and add a quotation of Milton to this entry?) SYNONYMS * delimb TRANSLATIONS

From Latin _limbus_, "border". NOUN LIMB (_plural_ LIMBS) * (astronomy) The apparent visual edge of a celestial body. _solar limb_ * (on a measuring instrument) The graduated edge of a circle or arc. TRANSLATIONS