limmer

plural limmers

1. ScotlandA rogue; a low, base fellow.

   Thieves, limmers, and broken men of the Highlands.

   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

2. A promiscuous woman.

   Doll Sneerpiece was not a scholar but fond of gentlemen, although to dub her a limmer, would have been to do her a wrong.

   1994, Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies

3. A limehound; a leamer.
4. A mongrel, such as a cross between the mastiff and hound.
5. nauticalA manrope at the side of a ladder.

comparative more limmer · superlative most limmer

1. Limber; flexible (either physically or morally).

   Then the limmer Scottes ared me, burnt my guddes, and made deadlie feede on me and my barnes.

   1564, Bullein, Dialogue

   3 more examples

   The roote is long and very limmer, spreading his bráches both large and long under the earth and doth oftentimes let, hinder, & staye both the plough and Dren in toyling the ground, for they be so tough and limmer, that the share & colter of the plough cannot easily divide and cut them asunder.

   1578, Rembert Dodoens, A Nievve Herball, Or Historie of Plantes, page 669

   Auld plenishen out by was strew'd, Guid L--d but it was limmer; Some creepy stools, an' shelfs weel scower'd Tae hide the worm pict tim'er Tae sell that day.

   1844, Robert Huddleston, A Collection of Poems and Songs, on rural subjects, page 81

   If you ride with the hell-spawned reivers and live as a limmer thief then you must expect to be singed by hell's fire.

   2002, Linda Lea Castle, Embrace the Sun: The Vaudrys, page 13

plural Limmers

1. A surname.