Definition of "hobble" []

• To walk or move along haltingly or with difficulty; limp. (verb-intransitive)
• To put a device around the legs of (a horse, for example) so as to hamper but not prevent movement. (verb-transitive)
• To cause to limp. (verb-transitive)
• To hamper the action or progress of; impede. See Synonyms at hamper1. (verb-transitive)
• A hobbling walk or gait. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• "Numps has sent for me to see poor little Greek and Latin hobble to the altar, but, 'tis a million to one, if our noble baronet does not whisk you there before her."
• "Ironically (or not), with the rising militancy of suffragists, skirts began to narrow until they became the barreled, banded style known as the hobble skirt."
• "Let not my length and my breadth nor yet my bulk delude thee, with respect to the son of Adam; for he, of the excess of his guile and his cunning, fashions for me a thing called a hobble and hobbles my four legs with ropes of palm-fibres, bound with felt, and makes me fast by the head to a high picket, so that I remain standing and can neither sit nor lie down, being tied up."