Home UK English palsy

Meaning of palsy in English:

palsy

Pronunciation /ˈpɔːlzi/ /ˈpɒlzi/

Translate palsy into Spanish

nounpalsies

mass noun

  • 1dated Paralysis, especially that which is accompanied by involuntary tremors.

    ‘a kind of palsy had seized him’
    • ‘Other patients may present with fractures, bone pain, cranial nerve palsies and osteomyelitis.’
    • ‘As the infection spreads in the temporal bone, it may extend into the cranium and result in cranial nerve palsies.’
    • ‘The most common manifestation in children is erythema migrans rash followed by arthritis, facial nerve palsy, aseptic meningitis, and carditis.’
    • ‘The presentation may be of an unexplained mass or cranial nerve palsies, meningeal symptoms, or even respiratory problems caused by brainstem infiltration.’
    • ‘The paralysis or palsy may affect mainly the legs, or all four limbs, or just one side of the body.’
    immobility, powerlessness, lack of sensation, numbness, deadness, incapacity, debilitation
    1. 1.1archaic A condition of incapacity or helplessness.
      ‘is the calmness of philosophy, or the palsy of insensibility, to be looked for?’
      • ‘When it is considered into what consternation the bystanders must have been thrown, rendering them, by the palsy of fear, incapable of assisting Lazarus in his struggles to free himself from the folds in which he was wrapped, the sublime self-possession of Jesus appears.’

verbpalsies, palsying, palsied

[with object]

  • Affect with paralysis and involuntary tremors.

    ‘she feels as if the muscles on her face are palsied’
    • ‘he buried an anguished face in palsied hands’
    • ‘the old boy network laid its palsied hand upon the business of wealth creation’
    • ‘His voice had a tremor in it too, words passing out over palsied lips.’
    • ‘Padlin looked at Waddley, amazed at the infantile terror palsying his features.’
    • ‘The U.S. intelligence community is palsied by lawyers.’
    • ‘It coursed up his spine and palsied his drawing hand.’
    • ‘John Paul's pain-racked, palsied old body is wheeled about on casters, his voice a shadow of its old, booming self.’
    • ‘Just the same, her role is the showy one - a crippled up, palsied, intimidating patient in a care home for the elderly.’
    • ‘Yes, there was a lot of chest and back scratching and thumping, and palsied flinging about of the hands and arms.’
    • ‘And this, with the Greens' propensity for error that increased in direct proportion to their frustration with their own palsied lack of penetration, was just enough to edge the game.’
    • ‘It's a tough assignment, one that could serve as a test case for much-needed reform in South Korea's palsied industrial sector.’
    • ‘Away with palsied, powerless preaching which is unmoving because it was born in a tomb instead of a womb and nourished in a fireless, prayer less soul.’
    • ‘Comedy is forever young and sees the palsied old from without; tragedy does not normally deal with anything so mundane or inescapable as the decay of the mind.’
    • ‘Albertson exaggerates the palsied contortions of his figures, imbuing them with a curious pathos.’
    • ‘I had seen this banal horror before in a much-loved grandfather, dead before his time, a palsied victim of Parkinson's.’
    • ‘The guileless McKenzie is of course immune, as he blunders through a palsied old world.’

Origin

Middle English from Old French paralisie, from an alteration of Latin paralysis (see paralysis).