1
as in incapacitates
to cause severe or permanent injury to
the car crash may have crippled two people for life
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2
as in injures
to reduce the soundness, effectiveness, or perfection of
the collision so severely crippled the ship that it had to be towed into port
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3
as in paralyzes
to render powerless, ineffective, or unable to move
a wave of strikes crippled that nation's steel industry
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Recent Examples of cripples
This inefficiency is invisible during small-scale development tests but completely cripples an application’s performance under the heavy load of a real production environment.
—
Expert Panel®, Forbes.com, 19 Sep. 2025
An ongoing alien siege cripples the world’s militaries, infrastructure, and communication centers but Will can run Premiere Pro, FaceTime, WhatsApp, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and remote control a Tesla all at the same time.
—Ct Jones, Rolling Stone, 12 Aug. 2025
Recent Examples of Synonyms for cripples
Verb
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Lorenzo confronts and incapacitates Pepe, Sonia’s main ally, before facing Sonia herself.—
Verb
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Automobility directly or indirectly causes one in 34 deaths annually, injures more than 100 million people a year, and has killed as many people as the two World Wars combined.—
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If a dog that has not been officially declared dangerous severely injures or kills a person when unprovoked, authorities may confiscate the dog, and the dog’s owner is liable for the incident.—
Verb
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This paralyzes executives and creates fatigue.—
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The smaller wasp quickly stings the spider, injecting its powerful venom that does not kill but permanently paralyzes it.—
Verb
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After Wednesday disables the machine with an axe, Isaac’s ability no longer works, and Thing attacks him.—
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To be specific, this mode disables custom actions, changes backlighting to a single color, and prevents profile switching.—
Verb
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These instructions help turn off the harmful protein that damages brain cells.—
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Every departure damages a team’s ability to deliver value to customers.—
Verb
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The survey also undermines the argument that tariffs will simply be a one-time price adjustment.—
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Legal experts note that autopen use is acceptable so long as the president directs it, but Trump insists its deployment in Biden’s final days undermines the validity of those actions.—
Verb
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Deadly holiday weekend mars broad crime drop The back-and-forth followed a Labor Day weekend of deadly violence in Chicago worse than in the previous two years, with seven people shot to death, according to preliminary Chicago Police Department reports.—
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Valuing a project at cost of production rather than value in an arm’s length sale—common in all economic statistics—especially mars Chinese data.—
Verb
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Over the longer term, forecasters will watch whether the vortex remains stable or weakens later this fall.—
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This special assurance for a specific competitor weakens competition.—
Cite this Entry
“Cripples.” Merriam-Webster.com Thesaurus, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/thesaurus/cripples. Accessed 1 Oct. 2025.
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