[Of obscure origin; G. lampen, ‘to hang limp,’ has been compared.]
1. Wanting in firmness or stiffness, flaccid; flexible, pliant. Of a textile fabric: Unstiffened.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Limp, limber, supple.
1750. M. Browne, Walton’s Angler, iii. 42. The Chub … eats waterish, and … the Flesh of him is not firm, but limp [earlier edd. short] and tasteless.
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Limp, limpsy, flaccid.
1840. Dickens, Old C. Shop, xvi. His [Punch’s] body was dangling in a most uncomfortable position, all loose and limp, and shapeless.
1866. Cornh. Mag., March, 348. A female with a heap of limp veil thrown up over an obsolete bonnet.
1884. Bazaar, 19 Dec., 658/1. Scarf arrangements … are made in almost any limp material.
1897. Bookman, Jan., 116/1. Strangling in our starch we can rally him [Byron] familiarly on his limp collars.
b. Bookbinding. Used to designate a kind of binding in which no mill-board is used.
1863. Parker’s Catal. Bks. printed for Univ. Oxf., 2. Sophoclis Tragœdiæ … each Play separately, limp cloth. 2s. 6d.
1882. Clar. Press List New Bks., 40. The Oxford Bible for Teachers … Turkey Morocco, limp, 22s. 6d.
2. transf. and fig. Wanting in firmness, strictness, nervous energy, or the like.
1853. G. J. Cayley, Las Alforjas, I. 196. We told them that our nation had no taste or genius for dancing,… preferring to imitate in a limp and spiritless manner, the dances of foreign countries.
1872. Bagehot, Physics & Pol. (1876), 76. Creeds or systems that conduce to a soft limp mind tend to perish.
1880. ‘Vernon Lee,’ Stud. Italy, II. ii. 24. His contemporaries composed in loose, limp rhymes.
1885. Dobson, At Sign of Lyre, 141. Whether … the limp Matron on the Hill Woke from her novel-reading trance.
