limb

noun

1. 1

   A major appendage of human or animal, used for locomotion (such as an arm, leg or wing).

   UUhoſe hands are made to gripe a warlike Lance— Their ſhoulders broad, for complet armour fit, Their lims more large and of a bigger ſize Than all the brats yſprong from Typhons loins:

   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.

2. 2

   A branch of a tree.

3. 3

   The part of the bow, from the handle to the tip.

4. 4

   An elementary piece of the mechanism of a lock.

5. 5

   A thing or person regarded as a part or member of, or attachment to, something else.

   That little limb of the devil has cheated the gallows.

6. 6

   Variant of limb of SatanEllipsis of limb of Satan (“a wicked or mischievous child”).

verb

1. 1

   To remove the limbs from (an animal or tree).

   They limbed the felled trees before cutting them into logs.

2. 2

   To supply with limbs.

   Innumerous living creatures , perfect forms , Limb'd and full grown: out of the ground uprose

   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.

3. 3

   To thoroughly defeat an opponent in fisticuffs

   Brian limbed Roger over at the Beahive last night.

noun

1. 1

   The apparent visual edge of a celestial body.

   the solar limb

   At 4h 57m 9s by my chronometer, (see Schedule B,) I observed with my telescope a small black speck on the preceding limb of the sun's disk, at the precise point to which I had been for some minutes directing my attention.

   Chandrasekhar (1946a, b) predicted that the limb of a star will be polarized, because photons scattered at the limb and toward the observer experience a scattering angle of Θ ≈ 90°.

2. 2

   The graduated edge of a circle or arc.

3. 3

   The border or upper spreading part of a monopetalous corolla, or of a petal or sepal; blade.

   The corolla limb of the moonvine Calonyction aculeatum is normally undivided.

Forms

plural

limbs

past tense

limbed

past participle

limbed

present participle

limbing

third person singular

limbs