2. To ascend as if with effort; to rise to a higher point. [ 1913 Webster ]

Black vapors climb aloft, and cloud the day. Dryden. [ 1913 Webster ]

3. (Bot.) To ascend or creep upward by twining about a support, or by attaching itself by tendrils, rootlets, etc., to a support or upright surface. [ 1913 Webster ]

Grand climacteric or
Great climacteric, the sixty-third year of human life. [ 1913 Webster ]

I should hardly yield my rigid fibers to be regenerated by them; nor begin, in my grand climacteric, to squall in their new accents, or to stammer, in my second cradle, the elemental sounds of their barbarous metaphysics. Burke. [ 1913 Webster ]

Climbing fern. See under Fern. --
Climbing perch. (Zool.) See Anabas, and Labyrinthici. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. An arm or a leg of a human being; a leg, arm, or wing of an animal. [ 1913 Webster ]

A second Hector for his grim aspect,
And large proportion of his strong-knit limbs. Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]

3. A thing or person regarded as a part or member of, or attachment to, something else. Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]

That little limb of the devil has cheated the gallows. Sir W. Scott. [ 1913 Webster ]

4. An elementary piece of the mechanism of a lock. [ 1913 Webster ]

Limb of the law, a lawyer or an officer of the law. [ Colloq. ] Landor. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. To dismember; to tear off the limbs of. [ 1913 Webster ]

Innumerous living creatures, perfect forms,
Limbed and full grown. Milton. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. (Mil.) The detachable fore part of a gun carriage, consisting of two wheels, an axle, and a shaft to which the horses are attached. On top is an ammunition box upon which the cannoneers sit. [ 1913 Webster ]

3. pl. (Naut.) Gutters or conduits on each side of the keelson to afford a passage for water to the pump well. [ 1913 Webster ]

Limber boards (Naut.), short pieces of plank forming part of the lining of a ship's floor immediately above the timbers, so as to prevent the limbers from becoming clogged. --
Limber box or
Limber chest (Mil.), a box on the limber for carrying ammunition. --
Limber rope,
Limber chain or
Limber clearer (Naut.), a rope or chain passing through the limbers of a ship, by which they may be cleared of dirt that chokes them. Totten. --
Limber strake (Shipbuilding), the first course of inside planking next the keelson. [ 1913 Webster ]

To limber up, to change a gun carriage into a four-wheeled vehicle by attaching the limber. [ 1913 Webster ]

The bargeman that doth row with long and limber oar. Turbervile. [ 1913 Webster ]

At the most ancient part of the human brain lies the spinal cord; the medulla and pons, which comprise the hindbrain; and the midbrain. This cobination of spinal cord, hindbrain, and midbrain MacLean calls the neural chassis. It contains the basic neural machinery for reproduction and self-preservation, . . . MacLean has distinguished three sorts of [ more recent brain structures controlling ] the neural chassis. The most ancient of them surround the midbrain. . . . We share it with the other mammals and the reptiles. It probably evolved several hundred million years ago. MacLean calls it the reptilian or R-complex. Surrounding the R-complex is the limbic system, so called because it borders on the underlying brain. (Our arms and legs are called limbs because they are peripheral to the rest of the body.) We share the limbic system with other mammals, but not, in its full elaboration, with the reptiles. It probably evolved more than one hundred fifty million years ago. Finally, surrounding the rest of the brain and clearly the most recent evolutionary accretion, is the neocortex. Carl Sagan (The Dragons of Eden, New York, Random House, 1977). [ PJC ]

As far from help as Limbo is from bliss. Shak. [ 1913 Webster ]

A Limbo large and broad, since called
The Paradise of fools. Milton. [ 1913 Webster ]

☞ The limbus patrum was considered as a place for the souls of good men who lived before the coming of our Savior. The limbus infantium was said to be a similar place for the souls of unbaptized infants. To these was added, in the popular belief, the limbus fatuorum, or fool's paradise, regarded as a receptacle of all vanity and nonsense. [ 1913 Webster ]

2. Hence: Any real or imaginary place of restraint or confinement; a prison; as, to put a man in limbo. [ 1913 Webster ]

3. Hence: A state of waiting, or uncertainty, in which final judgment concerning the outcome of a decision is postponed, perhaps indefinitely; neglect for an indefinite time; as, the proposal was left in limbo while opponents and proponents refused to compromise. [ PJC ]

4. (Anat.) A border or margin; as, the limbus of the cornea. [ 1913 Webster ]

Upclomb the shadowy pine above the woven copse. Tennyson. [ 1913 Webster ]