''lime'' ▫ᴱᴺ Entries

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''lime'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250825004545-00-⌔

lime - Wiktionary, the free dictionary

English

Noun

lime (countable and uncountable, plural limes)

• (chemistry) Any inorganic material containing calcium, usually calcium oxide (quicklime) or calcium hydroxide (slaked lime).
  • ✤ * Lime, which is the product of the burning of chalk or limestone, might be bought ready burnt, or it could be burnt in kilns specially constructed in the neighbourhood of the building operations.*¹
• (poetic) Any gluey or adhesive substance that traps or captures; sometimes a synonym for birdlime.
  • ✤ Monster, come, put some lime upon your fingers, and away with the rest.²
  • ✤ Like the lime which foolish birds are caught with.³
• (theater) A limelight; any spotlight.
  • ✤ Sellers moved on until he was actually trusted to operate the limes, the spotlights that can make or destroy an artist’s act.⁴
  • ✤ Then out of the blue, a spotlight much like the “limes” in a theatre, lit up what seemed like a Punch and Judy tent […] He struggled even more, when from out of the shadows and into the bright light of the limes, stepped Uncle Jolly.⁵

Verb

lime (third-person singular simple present limes, present participle liming, simple past and past participle limed)

• (transitive) To treat with calcium hydroxide or calcium oxide (lime).
  • ✤ If I were you, I’d lime.⁶
• (transitive) To smear with birdlime.
  • (rare) To ensnare, catch, entrap.
    • ✤ URSULA. She’s lim’d, I warrant you: we have caught her, madam.
      HERO. If it prove so, then loving goes by haps:
      Some Cupid kills with arrows, some with traps.⁷
    • ✤ Abraham, like his parents, seemed to have been limed and caught by the ensnaring inn.⁸
• (transitive) To apply limewash.

Noun

lime (countable and uncountable, plural limes)

• A deciduous tree of the genus Tilia, especially Tilia × europaea; the linden tree.
  • ✤ The linden or lime tree is the favourite haunt of the Elves and cognate beings; and it is not safe to be near it after sunset.⁹
  • ✤ But there was nothing of an ascetic’s expression in her bright full eyes, as she looked before her, not consciously seeing, but absorbing into the intensity of her mood, the solemn glory of the afternoon with its long swathes of light between the far-off rows of limes, whose shadows touched each other.¹⁰
• The wood of this tree.

Noun

lime (countable and uncountable, plural limes)

• Any of several green citrus fruit, somewhat smaller and sharper-tasting than a lemon.
• Any of the trees that bear limes, especially Key lime, Citrus aurantiifolia.
• (uncountable) Any of several brilliant, sometimes yellowish, green colours associated with the fruits of a lime tree.
  • ✤ Synonym: lime green (broadly synonymous, precisely hyponymous)
  • ✤ lime:
  • ✤ lime:
  • ✤ lime:
  • ✤ lime green:
  • ✤ Web lime:
  • ✤ bright lime:
  • ✤ electric lime:
  • ✤ Arctic lime:
  • ✤ Key lime:
  • ✤ French lime:
  • A particular one of those colours that has been standardized under this name, at least in some organizations’ standards.
    • ✤ lime:
    • ✤ lime:
    • ✤ lime:
• (fandom slang) A fan fiction story which contains sexual references, but stops short of full, explicit descriptions of sexual activity (coined by analogy with lemon).
  • ✤ WARNING: This is a lime. While it does not show explicit sex, as a lemon would, references to sexual situations abound.¹¹
  • ✤ Even with all the sex in Garden of EVA, I still think the main stories are better for just being the lemon-scented limes that they are.¹²
  • ✤ I have no intention of writing any lemon scenes, limes are possibilities but unlikely and if they occur they will be few in number.¹³

Adjective

lime (not comparable)

• Containing lime or lime juice.
• Having the aroma or flavor of lime.
• Lime-green.

Verb

lime (third-person singular simple present limes, present participle liming, simple past and past participle limed)

• (Caribbean, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago, informal) To hang out or socialize in an informal, relaxed environment, especially with friends, for example at a party or on the beach.

Noun

lime (plural limes)

• (Caribbean, Trinidad & Tobago) A casual gathering to socialize.

Noun

lime (plural limes)

• Alternative form of lyam (“a leash”).

Pronunciation

• IPA: /laɪm/
• Audio (Southern England): 🔊
• Rhymes: -aɪm

Etymology 1

From Middle English lyme, lym, lime, from Old English līm, from Proto-West Germanic ﹡līm, from Proto-Germanic ﹡līmaz, from Proto-Indo-European ﹡h₂leyH- (“to smear”).

Cognate with Saterland Frisian Liem (“glue”), Dutch lijm (“glue”), German Leim (“glue”), Danish, Norwegian Bokmål, Norwegian Nynorsk, and Swedish lim (“glue”), Faroese and Icelandic lím (“glue”), Latin limus (“mud”).

Etymology 2

🖼️ ➺

Lime (17th c.) and line (16th c.) are alterations of obsolete lind, from Middle English lynde, from Old English lind, from Proto-Germanic ﹡lindijō. The phonetic development is unusual, but it has been suggested that it began in compounds (loss of -d- perhaps before tree, the change to -m- before labials as in bark or wood). Doublet of linden, which see.

Etymology 3

🖼️ ➺

Borrowed from French lime, from Spanish lima, from Arabic لِيمَة (līma), from Classical Persian لِیمُو (līmū, līmō), from Sanskrit निम्बू (nimbū, “lime”), ultimately from Proto-Malayo-Polynesian ﹡limaw or Munda. Doublet of lemon.

Etymology 4

Either a back-formation of limer or from the derogatory term limey, a term first given to British soldiers but also used by Trinidadians for American soldiers who used to hang out idle in Port of Spain during World War 2.

Etymology 5

Printed 2026-06-28.

(echo:: @ ⌗)

Footnotes

1. 1952, L.F. Salzman, Building in England, page 149: ↩

2. 1610–1611 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act IV, scene i]: ↩

3. 1835, William Wordsworth, They called Thee Merry England, in old time [first line of unnamed poem]: ↩

4. 1980, Peter Evans, Peter Sellers: The Mask Behind the Mask, page 30: ↩

5. 2018, Robert Charles Hines, Twists and Turns: 13 Tales of the Uneasy, page 121: ↩

6. 1917, Rudyard Kipling, The Land: ↩

7. 1598–1599 (first performance), William Shakespeare, “Much Adoe about Nothing”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act III, scene i]: ↩

8. 1891, Thomas Hardy, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, volume 1, London: James R. Osgood, McIlvaine and Co., page 39: ↩

9. 1828, Thomas Keightley, The Fairy Mythology, volume I, London: William Harrison Ainsworth, page 158: ↩

10. 1871, George Eliot [pseudonym; Mary Ann Evans], chapter III, in Middlemarch […], volume I, Edinburgh; London: William Blackwood and Sons, →OCLC, book I, page 38: ↩

11. 1998 June 8, Gary Kleppe, “[Ranma] [Fanfic] Tangled Web”, in rec.arts.anime.creative ‎${}^{[1]}$ (Usenet): ↩

12. 1998 December 29, jiml…@earthlink.net, “[EVA] [FanFic] [Lemon] Garden of EVA 0:6x - Wet Dreams Bite!”, in rec.arts.anime.creative ‎${}^{[2]}$ (Usenet): ↩

13. 2001 November 27, Schemer, “[Ranma/SF] [FanFic] A Learning Experience - Chapter 01”, in rec.arts.anime.creative ‎${}^{[3]}$ (Usenet): ↩

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