Definition of "cripple"

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

1599, William Shakespeare, “The Life of Henry the Fift”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, [Act IV, scene i]

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, […]

1922, Maternity and Child Welfare - Volume 6

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.

2006, Glenn Earle Cummings, The Touch of His Hand

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 […]

2014, Paul M Mahlobogwane, Transcend like a Butterfly

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.

2015, Brennan Morton, Dying For Strangers: Memoirs of a Special Ops Operator in Iraq

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

1700, [John] Dryden, “Preface”, in Fables Ancient and Modern; […], London: […] Jacob Tonson, […]

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

2019, Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, I Don't Care

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

2012, Andrew Martin, Underground Overground: A passenger's history of the Tube, Profile Books, page 64