limbo
(Roman Catholicism) A speculation, thought possibly to be on the edge of the bottomless pit of Hell, where the souls of innocent deceased people might exist temporarily until they can enter heaven, specifically those of the saints who died before the advent of Jesus Christ and those of unbaptized infants; the possible place where each category of souls might exist, regarded separately.
Oh what a simpathie of woe is this, / As farre from helpe, as Lymbo is from blisse.
(by extension) Any in-between place, or condition or state, of neglect or oblivion which results in deadlock, delay, or some other unresolved status.
It is hard to place those soules in Hell whose worthy lives doe teach us vertue on earth; methinks amongst those many subdivisions of hel, there might have been one Limbo left for these: […]
[T]hat mysterious iniquity provokt and troubl'd at the first entrance of Reformation, sought out new limbo's and new hells wherein they might include our Booke also within the number of their damned.
[T]hen might ye see / […] / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls, / The sport of Winds: all these upwhirld aloft / Fly o're the backside of the World farr off / Into a Limbo large and broad, since calld / The Paradise of Fools, […]
(by extension, slang, archaic) Jail, prison; a jail cell or lockup.
(by extension, obsolete) Hades or Hell.
(by extension, obsolete) The state of something being held as security for a loan, or as a pledge.
(military, nautical, weaponry) A type of antisubmarine mortar installed on naval vessels.
(rare) To place (someone or something) in an in-between place, or condition or state, of neglect or oblivion which results in deadlock, delay, or some other unresolved status.
[A]s your doctrine is exceedingly evil, by Yamjamma's theory it follows, that you must be proportionably bedeviled; and since it harms others, your devil is of the number of those whom it is best to limbo; and since he is one of those that can be limboed, limboed he shall be in you.
(dance) A competitive dance originating from Trinidad and Tobago in which dancers take turns to cross under a horizontal bar while bending backwards. The bar is lowered with each round, and the competition is won by the dancer who passes under the bar in the lowest position without dislodging it or falling down.
(dance) To dance the limbo.
(by extension, also figuratively) To pass under something, especially while bending backwards.
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