Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Complete or partial muscle paralysis, often accompanied by loss of sensation and uncontrollable body movements or tremors.
  • noun A weakening or debilitating influence.
  • noun An enfeebled condition or debilitated state thought to result from such an influence.
  • noun A fit of strong emotion marked by the inability to act.
  • transitive verb To paralyze.
  • transitive verb To deprive of strength.
  • transitive verb To make helpless, as with fear.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A weakening, suspension, or abolition of muscular power or sensation; paralysis. See paralysis.
  • Palsied.
  • To paralyze; affect with palsy or as with palsy; deprive of action or energy.
  • To suffer from palsy; be affected with palsy.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • transitive verb To affect with palsy, or as with palsy; to deprive of action or energy; to paralyze.
  • noun (Med.) Paralysis, complete or partial. See paralysis.
  • noun paralysis of the facial nerve, producing distortion of one side of the face; -- so called from Sir Charles Bell, an English surgeon who described it.
  • noun See Writer's cramp, under Writer.
  • noun (Med.) paralysis agitans, a disease usually occurring in old people, characterized by muscular tremors and a peculiar shaking and tottering gait; now called parkinsonism, or Parkinson's disease.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • adjective colloquial Chummy, friendly.
  • noun pathology Complete or partial muscle paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by a loss of feeling and uncontrolled body movements such as shaking.
  • verb To paralyse, either completely or partially.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun a condition marked by uncontrollable tremor
  • noun loss of the ability to move a body part
  • verb affect with palsy

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Middle English palsie, alteration of Old French paralisie, alteration of Latin paralysis; see paralysis.]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From pals +‎ -y.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

From Anglo-Norman paralisie, parleisie et al., from the accusative form of Latin paralysis, from Ancient Greek παράλυσις (paralusis, "palsy"), from παραλύειν (paraluein, "to disable on one side"), from παρά (para, "beside") + λύειν (luein, "loosen").

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