LAME • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Lame

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/leɪm/ Listen

adjective

Lame adj. (compar. lamer; superl. lamest)

(a)

Moving with pain or difficulty on account of injury, defect, or temporary obstruction of a function; as, a lame leg, arm, or muscle.

(b)

To some degree disabled by reason of the imperfect action of a limb; crippled; as, a lame man. "Lame of one leg." "Lame in both his feet." "He fell, and became lame."

Hence, hobbling; limping; inefficient; imperfect; as, a lame answer. "A lame endeavor." "O, most lame and impotent conclusion!"

Lame duck

(a)

(Stock Exchange), a person who can not fulfill his contracts. (Cant)

(b)

An elected politician who is completing a term after having been defeated at an election; also, an office holder who cannot or chooses not to run again for the same office; So called from the presumed lack of political power of one who is soon to be out of office.

(c)

Any office holder who is serving out a term after a replacement has been selected.

verb

Lame v. t. (past & past part. lamed; pres. part. laming) To make lame. "If you happen to let child fall and lame it."

See images of 'Lame'

Etymology of 'Lame'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Lame" Quotes from Famous Books

... walk lame," Halsey said, when he had marked the course of the bullet. "It's too low to have hit anything but ...

— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart

... the Hague she fell very lame, and made the rest of the distance heavily enough. Twice she must rest by the wayside, which she did with pretty apologies, calling herself a shame to the Highlands and the race she came of, and nothing but a hindrance to myself. It was her excuse, ...

— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... nothing, it be nothing," the young man responded carelessly and pridefully. He read at hazard from the document: "In that year, before the break of the ice, came an old man, and a boy who was lame of one foot. These also did I kill, and the ...

— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... time his Poles ransacked the country. A lame peasant was the only inhabitant they had discovered; this was an unlooked-for piece of good fortune. He informed them that they were within the distance of a league from the Dnieper, but that it was not fordable there, ...

— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur

... struck into a narrow road traversing the wood. This, though apparently not much frequented, would at least lead me into lands inhabited, so turning my face to the West, that I might have light to survey as long as any gleamed in the sky, I trudged on. But I went slow enough: Rosinante was lame; I like a stranger to my body, it ...

— Henry Brocken - His Travels and Adventures in the Rich, Strange, Scarce-Imaginable Regions of Romance • Walter J. de la Mare

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