trammel

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Contents

English[edit]

Etymology[edit]

From French tramail (“net for catching fishes”), from Late Latin tremaculum.

Pronunciation[edit]

Noun[edit]

trammel (plural trammels)

  1. Whatever impedes activity, progress, or freedom, as a net or shackle.
  2. A fishing net that has large mesh at the edges and smaller mesh in the middle
  3. A set of rings or other hanging devices, attached to a transverse bar suspended over a fire, used to hang cooking pots etc.
  4. A net for confining a woman's hair.
    • (Can we find and add a quotation of Spenser to this entry?)
  5. A kind of shackle used for regulating the motions of a horse and making him amble.
  6. (engineering) An instrument for drawing ellipses, one part of which consists of a cross with two grooves at right angles to each other, the other being a beam carrying two pins (which slide in those grooves), and also the describing pencil.
  7. A beam compass
Translations[edit]
Something that impedes activity, freedom, or progress
device to suspend cooking pots over a fire

Verb[edit]

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

  1. To entangle, as in a net.
    • 1880 Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, lines 9-10
      the scarce-snatched hours
      Which deepening pain left to his lordliest powers: —
      Heaven lost through spider-trammelled prison-bars.
  2. (transitive) To confine; to hamper; to shackle.
    • 1948, Winston Churchill, The Second World War
      Virtuous motives, trammeled by inertia and timidity, are no match for armed and resolute wickedness.
Translations[edit]
To entangle, as in a net
To hamper
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