Etymology From Middle English lyme, lim, from Old English lim (“limb, branch”), from Proto-West Germanic *limu, from Proto-Germanic *limuz (“branch, limb”). Cognate with Old Norse limr (“limb”). The spelling with the silent unetymological -b first arose in the late 1500s. Compare crumb.
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:c. 1587–1588 (date written), [Christopher Marlowe], Tamburlaine the Great. […] The First Part […], 2nd edition, part 1, London: […] [R. Robinson for] Richard Iones, […], published 1592, →OCLC; reprinted as Tamburlaine the Great (A Scolar Press Facsimile), Menston, Yorkshire; London: Scolar Press, 1973, →ISBN, Act III, scene iii:
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.1914 November, Louis Joseph Vance, “An Outsider […]”, in Munsey’s Magazine, volume LIII, number II, New York, N.Y.: The Frank A[ndrew] Munsey Company, […], published 1915, →OCLC, chapter I (Anarchy), pages 377–378:
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.1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh: […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:
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Abbreviation, Ellipsis Ellipsis of limb of Satan (“a wicked or mischievous child”).
Etymology From Middle English lyme, lim, from Old English lim (“limb, branch”), from Proto-West Germanic *limu, from Proto-Germanic *limuz (“branch, limb”). Cognate with Old Norse limr (“limb”). The spelling with the silent unetymological -b first arose in the late 1500s. Compare crumb.
1
To remove the limbs from (an animal or tree).
They limbed the felled trees before cutting them into logs.
2
To supply with limbs.
Innumerous living creatures , perfect forms , Limb'd and full grown: out of the ground uprose1667, John Milton, “(please specify the page number)”, in Paradise Lost. […], London: […] [Samuel Simmons], and are to be sold by Peter Parker […]; [a]nd by Robert Boulter […]; [a]nd Matthias Walker, […], →OCLC; republished as Paradise Lost in Ten Books: […], London: Basil Montagu Pickering […], 1873, →OCLC:
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.1859, Henry D. Thoreau, Walden:
3
To thoroughly defeat an opponent in fisticuffs
Brian limbed Roger over at the Beahive last night.
Astronomy, Natural sciences 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.1870, United States Naval Observatory, Reports on Observations of the Total Eclipse of the Sun, August, 7, 1869, page 174:
1 more example
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°.2015, Ludmilla Kolokolova, James Hough, Anny-Chantal Levasseur-Regourd, Polarimetry of Stars and Planetary Systems, page 449:
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The graduated edge of a circle or arc.
On a measuring instrument
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Biology, Botany, Natural sciences 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.1945, “A new form of the moonvine Calonyction aculeatum with divided corolla limb, and length-of-day behavior and flowering of the common form”, in Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, volume 35, number 2: