famble

/ˈfæmbəl/

famble noun: a hand.

Noun

famble (plural fambles)

(obsolete, slang) A hand.
- We clap our fambles.c. 1622, John Fletcher, Philip Massinger [et al.?], “Beggars Bush”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […], published 1647, →OCLC, Act II...
- A Bow Street Runner says "I knew a cove as talked the way you do – leastways, in the way of business I knew him! In fact, you remind me of him very strong […] He was on the dub-lay, and very clever with his fambles. He ended up in the Whit, o’ course."1951, Georgette Heyer, The Quiet Gentleman

famble (third-person singular simple present fambles, present participle fambling, simple past and past participle fambled)

(obsolete) To stammer.
- “Stow that, Jem, if you please, ” said Gemman Joe, as he had been called by his comrade.— "Toggery is too apt to tell tales. I won't have a rag of it fambled. It's a prime job for us already, for we are to touch. five-and-twenty guineas a-piece, you know, for doing his business, and we don't get...1833, Horace Smith, Gale Middleton: A Story of the Present Day - Volume 1, page 149
- Destiny, it might be said, simply opened its mouth to speak and, for reasons no one really knew, fambled to a halt.1981, Alexander Theroux, Darconville's Cat, page 310

I'm keeping my fambles clean on this trip.1999, Nancy Kress, Yanked!, page 47:
“You know, I realized,” she began, her eyes sparkling in the pub's dimness, “that I didn't even catch your name at the Oxford Union the other night.” “Um, Sharpe,” I fambled.2017, Mark Sampson, The Slip:

Noun
plural	fambles
Verb
third-person singular present	fambles
present participle	fambling
past participle	fambled
past	fambled

Possibly related to fumble.

From Middle English falmelen.

What does famble mean?: Famble means a hand.
How do you use famble in a sentence?: I'm keeping my fambles clean on this trip.
What part of speech is famble?: Famble can be a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce famble?: Famble is pronounced /ˈfæmbəl/.
What is the plural of famble?: The plural of famble is fambles.

Adapted from Wiktionary: famble (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated: 2026-09-02

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: En-au-famble.ogg.

Cite this entry: “famble.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/famble. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.