Word.ws English Dictionary

trammelling

trammelling is the present participle and gerund of trammel.

Meaning of trammel

Verb

trammel (third-person singular simple present trammels, present participle (US) trammeling or (UK) trammelling, simple past and past participle (US) trammeled or (UK) trammelled)

  1. To entangle, as in a net.
    • the scarce-snatched hours
      Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers: —
      Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.1880, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lines 9–10
  2. (transitive) To confine; to hamper; to shackle.
    • In their vote, you would get something of some value, at least, however small; but in the other case, only the trammelled judgment of an individual, of no significance, be it which way it might.1854, Henry David Thoreau, Slavery in Massachusetts

See all 11 meanings of trammel

Noun

trammelling (plural trammellings)

  1. A hindrance or impediment.

Forms of trammelling

pluraltrammellings

Questions about trammelling

What does trammelling mean?
Trammelling means a hindrance or impediment.
What is trammelling the present participle and gerund of?
Trammelling is the present participle and gerund of trammel.
What part of speech is trammelling?
Trammelling is a noun.
What is the plural of trammelling?
The plural of trammelling is trammellings.

Words near trammelling in the dictionary

  1. trammelings
  2. trammell
  3. trammelled
  4. trammeller
  5. trammellers
  6. trammelling
  7. trammellings
  8. Trammells
  9. trammels
  10. trammels of Archimedes
  11. trammer

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: trammelling (page history and authors); trammel (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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Cite this entry: “trammelling.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/trammelling. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.