limmer

• IPA^(key): /ˈlɪmə/

• Audio (Southern England):

  (file)

• Rhymes: -ɪmə(ɹ)

Uncertain; perhaps from limb, or French limier; see leamer.

limmer (plural limmers)

1. (Scotland) A rogue; a low, base fellow.
   • 1814 July 7, [Walter Scott], Waverley; or, ’Tis Sixty Years Since. […], volume (please specify |volume=I to III), Edinburgh:  […] James Ballantyne and Co. for Archibald Constable and Co.; London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, →OCLC:

     Thieves, limmers, and broken men of the Highlands.

2. A promiscuous woman.
   • 1994, Jeanette Winterson, Art and Lies:

     Doll Sneerpiece was not a scholar but fond of gentlemen, although to dub her a limmer, would have been to do her a wrong.

3. A limehound; a leamer.
4. A mongrel, such as a cross between the mastiff and hound.
5. (nautical) A manrope at the side of a ladder.

limmer (comparative more limmer, superlative most limmer)

1. Limber; flexible (either physically or morally).
   • 1564, Bullein, Dialogue:

     Then the limmer Scottes ared me, burnt my guddes, and made deadlie feede on me and my barnes.

   • 1578, Rembert Dodoens, A Nievve Herball, Or Historie of Plantes, page 669:

     The roote is long and very limmer, spreading his bráches both large and long under the earth and doth oftentimes let, hinder, & staye both the plough and Dren in toyling the ground, for they be so tough and limmer, that the share & colter of the plough cannot easily divide and cut them asunder.

   • 1844, Robert Huddleston, A Collection of Poems and Songs, on rural subjects, page 81:

     Auld plenishen out by was strew'd, Guid L--d but it was limmer; Some creepy stools, an' shelfs weel scower'd Tae hide the worm pict tim'er Tae sell that day.

   • 2002, Linda Lea Castle, Embrace the Sun: The Vaudrys, page 13:

     If you ride with the hell-spawned reivers and live as a limmer thief then you must expect to be singed by hell's fire.