Word.ws English Dictionary

hamshackle

hamshackle verb: to tie (an animal) by a rope binding the head to one of the forelegs.

Verb

hamshackle (third-person singular simple present hamshackles, present participle hamshackling, simple past and past participle hamshackled)

  1. (transitive) To tie (an animal) by a rope binding the head to one of the forelegs.
    • to hamshackle a horse or cow
  2. (figuratively, transitive) To bind or restrain; to impose restrictions upon.
    • Not only are our sources, indicating the pronunciation of the Tetragrammaton, limited, but we are also hamshackled by certain time constraints.2010, Steven Ortlepp, Introduction to the Interlinear Bible, page 180

Synonyms of hamshackle

26 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Forms of hamshackle

third-person singular presenthamshackles
present participlehamshackling
past participlehamshackled
pasthamshackled

Origin of hamshackle

From ham + shackle.

Questions about hamshackle

What does hamshackle mean?
Hamshackle means to tie (an animal) by a rope binding the head to one of the forelegs.
What part of speech is hamshackle?
Hamshackle is a verb.
What is the past tense of hamshackle?
The past tense of hamshackle is hamshackled.

Words near hamshackle in the dictionary

  1. hamsa
  2. hamsandwich
  3. hamsandwiches
  4. hamsas
  5. Hamsey
  6. hamshackle
  7. hamshackled
  8. hamshackles
  9. hamshackling
  10. Hamsheni
  11. Hamshenis

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: hamshackle (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:

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