paraplegic
Americanadjective
noun
-
paraplegics
plural
adjective
noun
Other Word Forms
Noun Inflected Forms
Etymology
Origin of paraplegic
First recorded in 1820–30; from New Latin paraplēgicus, from Ionic Greek paraplēgikós; see origin at paraplegia ( def. )
Explanation
To be paraplegic is to be unable to use the lower half of your body. People with this disability are called paraplegics. Paraplegic is a medical word for being paralyzed from the waist down. If you're paraplegic, you can't move your legs or anything below the waist, and you have no feeling in those areas either. People usually get this condition because of damage to the spinal cord, which could result from a disease or an accident. Paraplegics often use wheelchairs to get around. This word is similar to quadriplegic, referring to people who are paralyzed from the neck down.
Vocabulary lists containing paraplegic
This Week in Pop Culture: January 12 -18, 2019
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The View from Saturday
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This Week in Words: Current Events Vocab for January 3–January 9, 2026
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
Tabatha Hayden, a paraplegic, had given up on finding an accessible home that she, her husband and their five children could afford.
From The Wall Street Journal ● May 18, 2026
Peter Lau, 59, from Huddersfield, who is T6 paraplegic, said looking at images of the platform, it seemed "like a game show challenge where you put someone in a wire cage".
From BBC ● Apr. 12, 2025
When adjunct professor Zelu, who is paraplegic, hits rock bottom personally and professionally, she unexpectedly writes a mega-bestselling work of Afro-futurism that also addresses the differently abled.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 28, 2024
When I met her she was a paraplegic; eventually she became a quadriplegic.
From New York Times ● Jun. 19, 2024
As she wrote paraplegic, Mrs. Olinski spelled it out, "P-A-R-A-P-L-E-G-I-C. It means that I am paralyzed from the waist down."
From "The View From Saturday" by E.L. Konigsburg
His work on paraplegics learning to walk again was featured at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival: New Frontier.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Mar. 27, 2026
Of those, 44 were marked as related to paraplegics, quadriplegics, other types of wheelchair users and other assistive-device users.
From Washington Post ● Sep. 12, 2022
Goydos remembers reading a story about a group of researchers who interviewed several lottery winners and several paraplegics and then going back to talk to the same people about their lives a year later.
From Golf Digest ● May 21, 2018
Completely locked-in patients achieve a higher level of satisfaction with life than many paraplegics, presumably because they have come to terms with their fate and their loss.
From The Guardian ● Jan. 6, 2018
Some paraplegics seem to live a fuller life than ever.
From A Matter of Proportion by Anne Walker
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
