Word.ws English Dictionary

hamble

/ˈhæm.bəl/

hamble verb: to mutilate; hamstring; cut away.

Verb

hamble (third-person singular simple present hambles, present participle hambling, simple past and past participle hambled)

  1. (obsolete, transitive) To mutilate; hamstring; cut away.
  2. (transitive) To cut out the balls of the feet of (dogs) so as to render them unfit for hunting.
  3. (intransitive) To walk lame; limp.

Proper noun capitalized: Hamble

Hamble

  1. A river in Hampshire, England.
  2. (abbreviation, ellipsis) Ellipsis of Hamble-le-Rice: a village and civil parish in Eastleigh borough, Hampshire, England.

Forms of hamble

third-person singular presenthambles
present participlehambling
past participlehambled
pasthambled
alternative formhammel
alternative formhamel
alternative formhammle

Origin of hamble

From Middle English hamlen, hamelen, from Old English hamelian (“to hamstring, mutilate”), from Proto-West Germanic *hamalōn, from Proto-Germanic *hamalōną (“to mutilate”), from Proto-Indo-European *kem- (“mutilated, hornless”). Cognate with German hammeln, hämmeln (“to geld”), Icelandic hamla (“to mutilate, maim”), Dutch hamel (“wether, castrated ram”).

Words that rhyme with hamble

Questions about hamble

What does hamble mean?
Hamble means to mutilate; hamstring; cut away.
What part of speech is hamble?
Hamble can be a verb or a proper noun.
How do you pronounce hamble?
Hamble is pronounced /ˈhæm.bəl/.
What is the past tense of hamble?
The past tense of hamble is hambled.

Words near hamble in the dictionary

  1. hambeasts
  2. hamberder
  3. hamberders
  4. Hamberg
  5. hambergite
  6. hamble
  7. Hamble-le-Rice
  8. hambled
  9. Hambleden
  10. Hambledon
  11. Hambledon Hill

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hamble (page history and authors); Hamble (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:

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

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