Word.ws English Dictionary

gambrel

/ˈɡæmbɹəl/

gambrel noun: the hind leg of a horse; the hock.

Noun

gambrel (plural gambrels)

  1. The hind leg of a horse; the hock.
  2. (dialectal, historical, obsolete) A bar, usually metal, with a central loop and a hook at each end, used to hang a carcass for butchering.
    • Within two hours the hog - killed, scalded, and scraped of its hair - was hanging pale from a big tree limb by a gambrel stick run through the tendons of its hind feet1997, Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain, London: Hodder and Stoughton, page 307
  3. A kind of meathook shaped roughly like a horse's hind leg.
    Synonyms:
    gambrel hook
  4. A gambrel roof.

Verb

gambrel (third-person singular simple present gambrels, present participle (US) gambreling or (UK) gambrelling, simple past and past participle (US) gambreled or (UK) gambrelled)

  1. To truss or hang up using a gambrel.
    • They raised him so, gambreled up by the bones in his cheek.1979, Cormac McCarthy, Suttree, Random House, page 9
    • And meet me; or I'll box you while I have you, And carry you gambril'd thither like a muttonc. 1615–1616, Thomas Middleton, John Fletcher, “The Nice Valour, or, The Passionate Mad-man”, in Comedies and Tragedies […], London: […] Humphrey Robinson, […], and for Humphrey Moseley […]...

Proper noun capitalized: Gambrel

Gambrel (plural Gambrels)

  1. A surname.

Synonyms of gambrel

  • gambrel hook

Forms of gambrel

Noun
pluralgambrels
Verb
third-person singular presentgambrels
present participle USgambreling
present participle UKgambrelling
past participle USgambreled
past USgambreled
past participle UKgambrelled
past UKgambrelled
Proper noun
pluralGambrels

Origin of gambrel

Uncertain, perhaps from Old Northern French gamberel, from gambe (“leg”).

Words formed from gambrel

Phrases with gambrel

Questions about gambrel

What does gambrel mean?
Gambrel means the hind leg of a horse; the hock.
What part of speech is gambrel?
Gambrel can be a noun, a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce gambrel?
Gambrel is pronounced /ˈɡæmbɹəl/.
What is the plural of gambrel?
The plural of gambrel is gambrels.

Words near gambrel in the dictionary

  1. Gambon
  2. Gambone
  3. Gambones
  4. gambooge
  5. gambos
  6. gambrel
  7. gambrel roof
  8. gambrel roofs
  9. gambrel-roofed
  10. gambreled
  11. gambreling

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: gambrel (page history and authors); Gambrel (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.

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Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: LL-Q1860 (eng)-JutishMale-gambrel.wav.

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