limb

plural limbs

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

   1 more example

   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

2. A branch of a tree.

   Synonyms: bough

3. archeryThe part of the bow, from the handle to the tip.
4. An elementary piece of the mechanism of a lock.
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.

   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

6. abbreviationellipsisEllipsis of limb of Satan (“a wicked or mischievous child”).

present singular third person limbs · participle present limbing · participle past limbed · past limbed

1. transitiveTo remove the limbs from (an animal or tree).

   They limbed the felled trees before cutting them into logs.

2. transitiveTo supply with limbs.

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

   1667, 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

   1 more example

   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. transitiveTo thoroughly defeat an opponent in fisticuffs

   Brian limbed Roger over at the Beahive last night.

plural limbs

1. astronomyThe apparent visual edge of a celestial body.

   the solar limb

   2 more examples

   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

   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

2. on a measuring instrumentThe graduated edge of a circle or arc.
3. biologyThe 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

plural Limbs

1. A surname.