Hobbled

Part of speech: adjective, verb

Definitions

1. To experience a restriction in mobility that impedes movement or progress, often due to physical limitations or injury
2. To walk awkwardly or with difficulty, resulting from a hindrance that affects movement or progress
3. Having movement limited or impaired often by some obstacle or injury ; to move unsteadily or with difficulty caused by physical restriction

Etymology: "Hobbled" is the past tense and past participle of "hobble," so its story is really the story of the verb. The verb comes from Middle English "hobblen" and "hobelen," and it belongs to a family of related forms across the Low German and High German languages: Middle Dutch "hoblen" and "hobbelen," the ancestor of modern Dutch "hobbelen," and Middle High German "hoppeln," meaning to hop, limp or hobble. That family tells us where the sense began. The shared idea is an unsteady, jolting motion, the kind of rocking gait of someone who cannot walk straight. Over time the verb settled into describing a bodily limp, and that meaning carried forward into English. Forms like "hobbled" in its figurative sense, of a limited or impaired movement, grew naturally out of that physical picture.

Synonyms: limped, lame, hindered

Antonyms: enabled, aided