cripple

adj

1. (archaic, dated, not-comparable)Crippled.

   “And chide the cripple tardy-gaited night, who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp so tediously away.”

   “Early treatment, and treatment spread over a long period, was the on means of rendering a cripple child fit to mix with its fellows on anything like equal terms, […]”

   “You let sin in a church and it will cripple that church's ministry. Let sin get its ugly hands on the life of an individual and it will wreck and ruin and twist any life that it gets a hold on. Here was a cripple man who was excluded from the temple.”

   “Other[s] think that, certain challenges are for certain people and not for them, that the reason when some women give birth to a cripple child, or male child instead to a female child, they think God did not answer their wishes, forgetting that every child is a gift from God […]”

   “He held the cripple boy like a towel. The cripple boy's arms and legs dangled uselessly over his father's arm, one of each on either side, while his father balanced the diaper-clad boy on his forearm.”

noun

1. (countable, offensive, uncountable)A person who has severely impaired physical abilities because of deformation, injury, or amputation of parts of the body.

   “He returned from war a cripple.”

   “I am […]a cripple in my limbs; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine.”

2. (broadly, countable, figuratively, uncountable)A person who is severely impaired or deficient in some non-physical way.

   “Many a one, who perhaps doesn't suspect it, is a moral cripple, or maybe a mental cripple.”

3. (countable, uncountable)A shortened wooden stud or brace used to construct the portion of a wall above a door or above and below a window.
4. (dialectal, uncountable)Scrapple.
5. (countable, uncountable)A rocky shallow in a stream.

verb

1. To make someone a cripple; to cause someone to become physically impaired.

   “The car bomb crippled five passers-by.”

   “A rackingly painful disease that affects the joints and finally cripples, it is caused by an imbalance of uric acid in the system.”

2. (figuratively)To damage seriously; to destroy.

   “My ambitions were crippled by a lack of money.”

   “But in respect to the emotional crippling of children it seems to me that women have been overblamed for the kinds of mothers they make, and underblamed for the failure of their marriages.”

   ““I was to see him the halfweek before, to plead for a reduction in the taxes he has placed on us. Impossible, to pay such a fee, and no reason for imposing it. The metalwrights are always willing to do our share, but there need must be a reason for it! He cripples us to build his treasury, and forces honest men to find work elsewhere.” / “The day I meet an honest metalwright, I’ll eat your hat,” a third voice said.”

3. (figuratively)To cause severe and disabling damage; to make unable to function normally.

   “With all these people all around / I'm crippled with anxiety / But I'm told it's where I'm s'posed to be.”

   “But the penny was beginning to drop: even a successful railway could be crippled by its capital costs.”

4. To release a product (especially a computer program) with reduced functionality, in some cases, making the item essentially worthless.

   “The word processor was released in a crippled demonstration version that did not allow you to save.”

5. (slang)To nerf something to the point of being underpowered.