different between limb vs limy

English

Pronunciation

• IPA^(key): /l?m/
• Rhymes: -?m
• Homophones: limn, Lymm

Etymology 1

From Middle English lyme, lim, from Old English lim (“limb, branch”), from Proto-Germanic *limuz (“branch, limb”). Cognate with Old Norse limr (“limb”). The silent -b began to appear in the late 1500s.

Noun

limb (plural limbs)

1. A major appendage of human or animal, used for locomotion (such as an arm, leg or wing).

   • 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.

2. A branch of a tree.

   Synonym: bough

3. (archery) The 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.
6. (botany) The part of a corolla beyond the throat.
7. Short for limb of Satan (“a wicked or mischievous child”).

Derived terms

• go out on a limb
• life and limb

Translations

Verb

limb (third-person singular simple present limbs, present participle limbing, simple past and past participle limbed)

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

2. (transitive) To supply with limbs.
   • 1859, Henry D. Thoreau, Walden

     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.

Synonyms

• delimb

Translations

Etymology 2

From Latin limbus (“border”).

Noun

limb (plural limbs)

1. (astronomy) The apparent visual edge of a celestial body.

   solar limb

2. (on a measuring instrument) The graduated edge of a circle or arc.
3. (botany) The border or upper spreading part of a monopetalous corolla, or of a petal or sepal; blade.

Translations

See also

Anagrams

• blim

English

Etymology

lime +? -y

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /?l??.mi/
• Rhymes: -a?mi
• Homophone: limey

Adjective

limy (comparative limier, superlative limiest)

1. containing or resembling lime
   • 2004, Richard Fortey, The Earth, Folio Society 2011, p. 6:

     Limy muds accumulated there as sediments, and entombed the remains of the animals living on the sea-floor.

Translations